A new semi-pro league just called tonight and asked me to work their league this year. I have one week to learn NFL rules! I'll mainly be wearing the white hat so I have a lot to learn. Any tips on websites or something else I can get quickly to help me learn? Anyone have any helpful advice?

I am the R for a semi-pro league with NFL rules. Game timing is way different, especially the last 2 minutes of the half and game. The other big difference is penalty enforcement. You need to get a rule book, the league should have one for you and focus on those 2 areas. To talk to someone would be very benifitial!

What is the name of the league? I work the NAFL (North American Football League)

MJT - I'm not sure of the name of the league. I think it's a new league around the upper Midwest. Since it's new to our area, I don't know of anyone who has worked anything like this. It would be nice to hear from anyone in this area (northeast Wisconsin - Green Bay region) that has some experience working NFL rules. I figured timing and penalty enforcement would be the biggest differences. They are sending a rule book, but you know how that is! It's not what it says that matters, it's what it means.

If you want a jumpstart, go to your local bookstore (Barnes and Noble, Borders, etc.) and see if you can locate an NFL rulebook.

You can also go to http://www.nfl.com/fans/rules to get some idea of the rulebook.

Here is another site

http://www.supernfl.com/NFLRules.html

[Edited by mikesears on May 20th, 2005 at 12:31 PM]

When is your 1st game? If you would want to email me, we could arrange a time to talk on the phone and I could help you in whatever way I could. I bet it is the NAFL. Email me if you want any more help from me. I am a late-nighter, so we could talk some night if you are interested.

[email protected]

Just be careful, as often these are not the official league rulebooks but are, instead, published by an outside company. YMMV as to the accuracy of said publications.

Get the following book.


An official from my association gave me his old NFL rulebook and I did a quick comparison to this book and the contents seemed identical.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...754201-8951322

[Edited by mikesears on May 20th, 2005 at 03:10 PM]

Thanks for all the feedback - it has really helped. I have a lot of reading to do in the next week, but with your assistance, I think I, and the other officials around here, will be ready to go come Saturday night.

The game went pretty good. Two good teams and they were very well behaved. We ended up with a few questions after working one game:
Incomplete pass - watching NFLe (which is supposed to be NFL rules), I noticed that the clock usually starts on the ready after an incomplete pass. Is that correct?
Injury - I was hoping we wouldn't have one of those injury things at the end of the game!!! But of course we did. I'm sure we did it wrong - but nobody knew. Does anyone have a simple explanation?
With only one week of prep, we weren't as ready as we should have been but we handled the game.

There is a rule exception in the NFLE regarding clock status after incomplete passes. It starts when spotted, except after the 2 minute warning in the 1st half, and inside the last 5 minutes of the game.

In the NFL, the clock starts on the snap, no matter what.

All injury time-outs after the 2 minute warning will result in a charged time-out, except if the injury occurs on a play where there is a change of possession, field goal or try or if the injury is caused by a foul.

If the team in question are out of TO's, you can have an "Excess Time-Out" and a 10 second runoff, if the clock was running at the time and the score was tied or if Team A is behind. Note that you can only have a 10 second runoff against the offense, never against the defense!

If the excess TO was their 5th TO, they would also be penalized 5 yards, in addition to the 10 second runoff.
The defense can accept the foul and the runoff, or just the foul.

There are also another type of situations that can cause a runoff, and those are fouls to preserve time inside the last minute of a half. Fouls that prevent the snap (FST, illegal snap) and fouls that preserve time (ING, throwing ball OOB, ING) are subject to a 10 second runoff. In these cases, the score does not matter. If A has any timeouts left, they can use a TO to aviod the runoff.

As with excess TOs, the clock must be running when the foul occurs, and it is only applicable for offensive fouls. A "LOS foul" that does not prevent snap, such as ill. formation, ill. motion and so on, are not subject to a runoff.

There are several "periods" in the game timingwise: Normal timing, inside two minute warning in the first half, inside 5 minutes in the 4th qtr, inside two minute warning in 4th qtr and inside one minute in the half. Those are all times when the timing rules change in some way.

Good luck!

[Edited by Dommer1 on May 30th, 2005 at 10:11 AM]

Hey Dommer1 - thanks a ton. That info really helps. We did the injury situation wrong and we pretty much knew it at the time. It's great to be on the field so early. We didn't have anything but high school around here so our season (fall) is only a couple of months long.

I'll post the rules differences between NFL and NFLEL under the posting "NFLe".