How much explanation do you give captains regarding penalty choice when the choice is obvious?

We try to make the choice so obvious that the captain cant screw it up. We use things like:

"Five free yards- do you want them."
"We are going to count the touchdown, if that's OK with you."
"You have the play back here or the ball way up there and the down over."

Etc

I would be interested to know what other crews do and how you phrase penalty choices.

Our WH does that

Depends on the age of the kids. At Varsity, we are probably pretty simplistic - not giving anything to them: "If you decline, you get the touchdown. If you take the penalty, it's 1st and 5 on the 23."

For younger kids, you steer them more.

On tack-on penalties (5 free yards), you just walk it.

A white hat I worked with last year told the captains before the coin flip that he would give them their best option first. By dropping that hint, that would "steer" them to think during the game to listen to what he says first.

I give choices if there is a real choice, such as a hold on a play that was dumped for a loss.

Penalties on the offense in which there was a long gainer - I don't bother asking.

I don't talk to captains when the choice is obvious. A runs for 15 yards and get talked by the face mask - I ain't askin', I'm tackin'. A runs for 8 yards and there is holding on the LOS - I ain't askin', I'm walkin'. A commits an illegal shift on an incomplete pass - I'm askin' 3/8 or 2/13?

I'm a LJ at varsity but i mostly do Referee at lower levels. In youth league games I go as far to say, "thats a false start and you want it". If it is a real choice I say to them "this is a tough chioce. " Then, I give the best choice first.

communication
 

While I certainly can see the point of not askin, but tackin....I think it is a good idea to keep communicating with the captains...I try to steer them, I usually do something on the long gainer with a hold behind it, I will usually start off by saying, you're gonna want to take this right??...but I think not talking to the captains is a bad idea as you may need to communicate with them for another reason later, and keeping the channels open and positive is a good idea at least in my book :D

Situation last week. I am working LM and have an offensive pass interference on 3rd down. BJ covered my flag and I went and told WH. I then went back, got my flag and headed over to my chains. The next thing I know the WH is marking the ball ready for play with no walk off. I run in (Ohio had an experiment last year with no loss of down on OPI- I thought he had forgotten that the experiment was over) Anyway, WH told me that B's captain declined penalty...twice. B's coach went crazy. I'm not certain our WH handled this correctly. Thoughts?

Sounds good to me. If I start giving the options and they want to decline penalty I'm not going to argue. Now below HS I probaly would try and stop them from declining.

Dan Dierdorf once told the story of Jerry Markbreit telling them they didn't want a choice when they made a choice to decline the penalty in order to get the statistics for a player.

In my pregame with the coaches I let them know the captains will not get a verbal "if you decline" on obvious penalties. If there is a real choice the captain get turned in the direction of the coach while I explain the choices.

The thing I like to do is make sure the cpatain does not make a mistake and take the wrong choice. Someone is going to say our job is not to coach and that is correct. But if you assist the captain of both teams with the coices that does not give an advanatge to either team.

im sure in the most recent case the WH went "are you sure"

so he gave them one more chance to change his mind

Thanks for the input guys. I think the officials manual says that we are prevent the captain from making a foolish choice. (I am paraphrasing here) I don't know that there was much of a choice here consideing the loss of down.

Don't let that happen!

Let's say the experienced team has chosen to defer to the second half. You first response is to step out and signal, "Team A has won the toss and elected to defer their choice to the second half."

Then back to the players, you ask, "Would you like to receive a kick?" Now is this player going to say, "No, sir, we want to kick the ball."

And you say, "You want to kick the ball this half and give them the choice for the second half?"

The captain answers, "Yes, sir, that's what the coach said to do."

At that point you have used persuasion and it failed, let them kick off.

That happened two seasons ago. We questioned the coach and reaffirmed his captains choices and they promptly lost the game 61-0 and the team had a new coach next season.

As my granddaddy once said, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

one more thing
 

Ed,
Just one more thing, they still do have the option to defend a goal if they choose :).. this happened in our first game this year...the toss winner chose to kick, because his coach told them they wanted to be on defense if they won the toss....the white hat said are you sure you don't want to defer?? he said yep we want to kick...so it was partially the coaches fault too LOL

Two weeks in a row now, big numbers representing for the coin toss. I'm not passing judgement, but....

Second half options - R asks the team with the choice what they want to do, they turn around and look quizically back at their bench for guidance. "Do you want to defer to next week or would you like the ball?" was coming next but they finally said they wanted the ball.

This week, white has choice, takes ball. I ask green what goal they wish to defend and they both look at each other with that 'uh oh' expression. I say, "you guys talked about this, right?" "Umm, that one" one captain says, pointing sheepishly at the scoreboard end.

It's like you're talking to high school kids!

Have you thought about asking the coach(es) "If you win the toss you want_____? Write it down (on your card)and then when the team chooses to defer, you tell the other team "you want the ball" and then the team that defered to point their backs to the goal they want to defend, no kid gets chewed out, everyone gets what they wanted.

Yes, the first two weeks they moved the games south of here (a crew went to the games about 300 miles), but the last three weeks we have had games here. The regular season ends 2 Oct and then the playoffs with the State Chmpionship on 23 Oct

Kinda late for the thread, but here's a couple of comments...

1) On pre-snap penalties, the new local mechanic is to not even do preliminary signals, but to just tell the offendees, give the "real" signals and mark off the penalty...

2) I work exclusively JV and freshman games, so as part of my pregame meeting with the coaches, I ask them if their captains know the difference between kicking and deferring... That's usually enough to get them thinking about instructing the captains, if necessary...

I don't work WH in Varsity sports, but I do work WH in flag-football in pretty high levels. I've found that on most penalties, I know what the team's want. Like has been said before, on a long gain with a hold by A behind the line... I know what B wants to do. The only thing walking up to the captain and explaining things is doing is making the game longer, confusing 18 year old kids who have coaches screaming at them already, and risking a kid screwing up and getting the crew yelled at.

Doesn't the rule book itself say somewhere that the Referee doesn't have to give the captains the option on an obvious penalty? Maybe that's just NIRSA (flag football).

At the coin toss I make it simple. Home wins the toss and wants to defer. I look at the visiting captain and say "You would like to receive, correct?" If he says no he wants to kickoff, I turn at him and say "Okay, do you understand that if you say you want to kickoff, you're giving the ball to the other team both halves? Are you SURE you don't want to receive?" If he says no he wants to kick again, you just have to just settle with the fact you did the best you could to help him out but he shot himself in the foot.

I think the bottom line is that our job is to keep the kids safe, keep the game fair, and make the tough calls. I don't see how helping them out with obvious decisions is hurting the integrity of the game.

Sometimes a kid will be "programed" into a response by the coach to were he is spouting off an answer before I have a chance to finish the options. I will stop them and tell them listen to me and give them their full list of choices.

Sometimes it cannot be helped. I had a live ball Chop block and a dead ball USC against the defense. I presented the options to the defensive captian first telling him " I have a 15 yard chop block foul against white. You want the 15 don't you?" He said "decline it." I told him that he needs to understand that when I mark off the USC it will probably give the offense a first down. He again said to decline it because that is what the coach wanted. Sure enough the half the distance walk off on the USC was enough to give A a first down. (It was so close we actually had to measure.)

These were second half options - not much gray matter needed.

I normally ask the captains I' walking out with what they're going to do in the event of winning the toss, losing the toss and the other team winning and deferrng.

Second half options are the brainpower equivalent of writing your name at the top of the SAT answer sheet - you assume they'll be able to handle that one.

I'm a LJ. Prior to taking the captains out to the referee for the 2nd half choices I say to them. "It's their choice, if they receive do you know which goal your coach wants you to defend?" Many times I get a blank look from them, then they turn and ask the coach. The coach tells them and since he doesn't know I primed them, he thinks he choose the captains wisely.