Declined Penalty on a play with a TD

[commish34]

Thanks for the info. This guy is considered our lead official for our youth association. He is a State certified official and is on a varsity crew. He is not the crew's white hat. We don't have a great pool of officials to pull from in our local H.S. assoc. The good officials that are local handle all of the sub-varsity and middle school games so the youth leagues pick up the crumbs. This would be a great developmental league for young officials but around here, officiating isn't cool with the younger generation.

I gave up officiating about 2 years ago to spend more time with my family. My son had started playing youth football and I wanted to invest more time with him. I was asked to coach in a flag league and saw a need to develop flag specific rules. After some research of flag leagues around the country, I wrote up a set of rules to present to the board and current commish. The rules were implemented and they asked me to take over as commish when the former one moved on. Now I go from coach to commish and some of the officials are struggling with me giving them rule intrepretations. My son being on a team doesn't help the matter much because they think there is a bias there even though several of the items I've thrown at them were beneficial to my son's opposing team. I remember now why I got into officiating and why I put so much effort into it. I hate seeing guys out there not doing it for the right reasons and not willing to learn.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by commish34

I hate seeing guys out there not doing it for the right reasons and not willing to learn.

What are the right reasons?

I am a varsity crew chief / white hat.

I work HS football as a challenge - to improve, do a good job, get better year after year. To develop my crew and get us better as a team.

I work youth football for the dinero.

They get a full effort from me (cause I wouldn't let anyone see me give less than my all), but I derive little actual enjoyment from it with the exception of getting my check at the end of the day.

For youth football to be a good development ground, there needs to be at least one official on the field who can lead and mentor others. Or one watching and providing leadership. Most times, I see youth games run by a crew who have nobody who can lead or mentor. Or guys who have one year of experience 30 times who wouldn't listen to even the best of advice.