The Official Forum - White Hat History anyone?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

There are theoretic reasons for the penalty horn, which was used from an early time in North American football on both sides of the border, but not back to when the ref was the only official. Maybe it came in with the 20th Century, I'm not sure.

BTW, until pretty recently in Canadian football (I forgot who had it last, CFL or Football Canada -- or maybe it's still there), it was still theoretically possible for officials to whistle a play dead following an infraction if further play by the team in possession would be futile (because the penalty would be enforced from a spot already determined), but officials just stopped using that judgement. (The way the rule was written was poor in that it allowed play to be killed if further play would clearly not benefit the non-offending side, but if you think about play situations you see what a hosing that could be! So instead I'm giving the obvious spirit of the rule.) It was a version of rugby's "advantage law", and was abolished in USAn football much, much earlier. It is kind of rotten, though, that injuries, offsetting fouls, and just plain blunders can be made by players during an interval when play is futile because it will be canceled by penalty.

Robert

As far as I know, the only play killing whistle we have is on O Line procedure (movement before snap), but I think that's the same in four down ball, eh?

Other than that, we kill the play only for the usual reasons....and when moose wander on to the field (they tend to be real "ball hogs").

Thanks for the explaination of the penalty horn. As a little kid I remember playing with my father's penalty horn. I don't ever remember asking when I got into officiating how the who process worked. I sure wish he or I had saved that horn, it would be a great keepsake now.

I watched a bit of the movie "Remember the Titans" last night and noticed the officials wearing striped hats. The movie was set in the early 70's but I must admit I've never seen that sort of thing before....did the officials back then really wear something like that?

The stripes on the hats may have been a regional thing.

In the 60' & 70's officials in HS and NCAA wore the same black hats with white piping that they do now.

I think some college conferences did things differently until the 90s. I remember seeing Pac-10 games with officials having numbers on their shirts.

I also remember seeing old SEC footage (from the 50s or 60s) some officials wore a white cap with black piping.

Once the 90s rolled around, all college officials in all conferences had the same uniforms.

Quote:

Originally Posted by HossHumard

That was really ugly looking. Just as strange as the long-sleeved shirts worn by the refs in "Hoosiers."

I still have a hat with the large black and white stripes that we wore in the 60's and a red penalty flag. And somewhere in this house, I have one of the black and white stripe shirt that is actually a dress type shirt with buttons.
It looks like a dress shirt that buttons-up plus the sleeves had buttons -and this is what we wore. The collar of the shirt and the sleeve cuff are also striped black and white.
>

Thanks for the memories guys!

I just love the "sloppy" and "flamboyant" signals given by officials in ALL sports in the older days.

No signal was crisp what so ever.