I didn't see it coach...
 

This is my first year officiating football.

I was the HL in a Pop Warner Jr Pee Wee game (Fed rules) last night. 3-man mechanics This is what happened:

A 1-10 @ A30. A10 runs towards my side, he is tripped up at A30 and lands on A32. I mark the spot and the U is waiting at the hash for the ball, when we look and B33 has the ball at A28. Neither of us saw how or when the ball changed hands. R came over from the other wing and wanted to give the ball to B. U and I said since we didn't see the ball come lose, it stays A ball. We "won" the argument, but after the game R insisted we should have given the ball to B.

The official running the clock in the press box later told us, he saw B take the ball after A was down, so we made the right call.

Any opinions?

Why did R want to give ball to B? Did he see the ball come loose? If nobody saw it come loose then the ball is dead. Just because he saw it in "possession" of another player is not reason to award it to that player.

Of course, the next question is...when you blew your whistle did you see the ball in possession of the player who had it and who you thought had been tackled with it?

Actually, I didn't blow my whistle cause I didn't see the ball. U blew his whistle. I assumed the runner had the ball and came up to make the spot when I realized he didn't have it.:confused:

The only way, imho, to award possession to the other team, is if you see the turnover 100%. I doubt the R did, so I believe that he was out of line. Way to stick to your guns!

Great move!! You are wise beyond your years. The only thing is, if you don't see the ball, keep officiating.

This brings up a point that I've often seen a turnover called, but is a case where you don't see the turnover.

QB sneak up the middle. Everyone knows the ball is in the pile, but nobody sees it. In these cases, we don't need to blow the whistle, and don't. But suddenly a B defenders breaks out of the pile with the ball.

Turnover?

If there is a pile, then you gotta get in there. In my experience, a QB sneak often has the QB progress stopped before a pile ensues. In fact, the QB sneak is often in our pre-game for hhte side guys to quickly rule of progress.

I know that you mentioned on those crash plays at the goalline, the U is allowed to signal TD. On the wing, it can be damn near impossible to see the ball in the middle, especially on sneaks and dives. Even crashing in on those plays you can't always see the ball, especially if the runner goes low rather than over the pile.

But that doesn't answer the question. If suddenly B comes out of a pile with the ball, and nobody saw the runner down in possession, is it a turnover?

You have to distinguish a sneak from a wedge. On a wedge play, the runner's progress might be stopped without his being in contact with an opponent, and the ball remains live.

Robert

On the goal line plays, our U may signal (by grabbing his whistle) that the ball is across the plane, but NEVER signals TD. The wings use the information from the U to decide whether a TD was indeed scored. The U may see that the ball has broken the plane, but cannot rule on whether the knee was down first.

Yup. Our Us rule of forward progress. It's never been a problem that I've noticed.

Same mechanic here. I was referring to JR's previous posting that U's in Canada are permitted to signal TD, and was trying to correlate that to how they handle those crash plays even in the middle of the field.