5 for Varsity in Wisconsin, all the way through the playoffs, too.

3, 4, or 5 for subvarsity depending on the school. I will not take my crew to work 3-man anymore, those days are done. Since we get games directly from the schools at the subvarsity levels, I simply turn down any requests for 3-man.

I would go to 6-man in a heartbeat, although my umpire would immediately tell me to find another umpire since he was going to work a deep wing.

In Louisiana we use 5 for varsity games. Once the playoffs start, we still use 5 except for the "Dome crews", who have 6. All of the state championship games (Dome games) are officiated with 6.

I don't understand states that expand crew size for the playoffs or the championship game. It has to be difficult to adjust mechanics for 1-3 games after a whole season working one way. If states go from 5 to 6 man crews in the playoffs, at least 2 of the 6 will be working a different position and it will impact all officials' coverage zones.

Why mess with mechanics during the playoffs? How much do the benefits of increased coverage outweigh and difficulty of adjusting the mechanics?

Major League Baseball does it. You tell me.

Ohio uses 5 man for all playoff games. Who said Ohio is going to 6 man in the future? I have heard H.Z. speak on this and we will not be going to 6 or 7 man anytime soon. Where would we get the officials from, we barely have enough good officials as it is. Only a few schools have 6 or 7 man games, ie. St. Iggy, Canton McK, Massillon, and the like.

In the case of football, I honestly do not see this as a big deal. Working 7 Man is much easier than working 5 man. Working 6 man contributes a lot more work for the Umpire but doable. If you have extensive training, you really make the work easier for the individual official to work the games. With teams passing much more than ever, I have no problem with added officials for that purpose in critical games. All the deep wings really do is help cover passing plays and deep runs. And they help the short wing on sideline plays. I do not see this hurting the game.

Peace

I think the biggest challenge with working 5-man during the year and then going to 6-man in a state finals is the mechanics are different for the short wings and the deep wings aren't used to working those positions. Coverage is probably better but you have to know what your keys are and how the mechanics work in order to do it effectively. My concern would be if the crew members could effectively learn those mechanics in a short period of time.

When I worked my first college scrimmage, I had a hard time getting used to reverse mechanics on turnovers, staying at the LOS on passing plays, and goal line coverage once we started getting close to a score. You can pre-game all that stuff but on the field, instincts take over and if you aren't used to it, it will take some getting used to. I'd hate to have to "get used to it" during a state finals game.

I am not saying it is ideal to work from one mechanics to another. I am saying that in football, there are not the drastic movements that would make it impossible to work with more officials. This is not a situation like basketball or baseball and you completely change the movements of the officials. Even the coverages do not really change that much, because it is good in football to have several eyes on a particular play. Now you have just added angles. That is why on a DPI you might have a certain official on certain calls because they have a much better angle. In those other sports I mentioned, all your responsibilities change when you add officials. Actually from what I understand your responsibilities in football with 6 and 7 officials decrease.

Peace

I only dare speak for the situation in NY, but I suspect the logic is the same elsewhere, although I don't think it makes much sense.

The issue is money. The powers to be recognize that (in NY) utilizing a 5th official for Sectional level games on up, provides a much better level of coverage insuring a better level of competition. I suspect the same is true going from 5 to 6 men, or 6 men to 7.

The falicy is in, although recognizing that the added official(s) improves the operation and management of the game, allowing the games that actually decide who will play in the post season contests be managed by smaller crews than are known, and understood, to be less than optimal.

Unfortunately, it seems those making crew size decisions don't understand, or more likely refuse to even consider, the reality that adding each official not only provides an additional pair of eyes, at each increment it enhances the abilities of each of the other officials regarding their responsibilities.

Most of Massachusetts uses 5 man crews, but the Western part of the state still uses 4 man crews. Very tough.

I agree 6 is better than 5 but if I'm asked to work a 6-man crew rather than 5, I don't know how my responsibilities change. I might key on a particular receiver if we have a 5-man crew but that may change on a 6-man crew. If I don't realize that (and neither does the deep wing), we could both be watching the same receiver and nobody is watching the receiver who is fouled. On a 5-man crew, I have the entire sideline and the goal line on almost every play. On a 6-man crew, I now know the deep wing has anything inside the 2 and I have to reverse mechanics on any COP. If I had not previously worked a 7-man crew in a college scrimmage I would not have known that. I still have a long way to go to learn the 7-man mechanics and I would hate to have my first experience with anything over 5 to be a state championship game. There are enough differences for many of the positions that something will get missed if you don't understand the mechanics.

If you've worked with various numbers of officials and done it long enough, you can adjust, right? If you have enough experience to be getting playoff games, it shouldn't take you too long in a particular game to focus and re-adjust what you have to do in a 6-man game versus a 5-man game or a 5-man versus a 4-man. You just do it. You have to do it.

If you have never worked 6-man or reviewed the mechanics, just talking about them in a pre-game is not enough preparation no matter how much you've worked. I've been there and done that but luckily it was just a couple college JV games and scrimmages. The mechanics for the wings is very different between 5 and 6-man (much more than the variations some 5-man crews use). I was surprised at all the differences when I started working 7-man in college games this year. I assume you've worked some 6 or 7-man mechanics but do you remember how long it took you to learn them? Would you really want that first experience to be a game as important as the state finals. I would be more comfortable if the additional officials were added in the first round of the playoffs so the officials had at least a few rounds to become accustomed with the new mechanics.

W. PA uses 6 for regular season and 7 for playoffs. State playoffs use 7 as well.

I would guess the mechanics from 6 to 7 are much less dramatic than from 5 to 6. Anyone who has been through that care to elaborate?