NFL Umpire New Position

[3SPORT]

Mike Pereira was on the Dan Patrick show Thursday and said that the biggest change for next season will be the new position for the umpires. Umpires will be in the backfield. He said it will change some of the speed up offenses.

It will be interesting and how long before this is adopted for college and then eventually high school.

I predict within 3 yrs for college and 5 for high school.

[TXMike]

Could be less for college with as many NFL and ex-NFL guys who are now supervisors there. Course after the NFL's experiment, they may abandon it anyway. As for HS, I don't think so, unless HS's go to 7-man crews. (And I am a guy who has advocated to get the U out of there for over 5 years)

[ajmc]

Originally Posted by TXMike

Could be less for college with as many NFL and ex-NFL guys who are now supervisors there. Course after the NFL's experiment, they may abandon it anyway. As for HS, I don't think so, unless HS's go to 7-man crews. (And I am a guy who has advocated to get the U out of there for over 5 years)

I wouldn't throw away all the current Umpire mechanics manuals for High School, just yet. There is a real steep pyramid of talent as the game of football moves up levels. Although it's nice to think of each level leading to the next, there is an enormous step up in talent at each level.

What may be simply necessary and reasonable to deal with NFL talent, is likely overkill at many of the Collegiate levels, which are a huge step up from High School.

In Upstate NY we've been battling to expand from 4 to 5 officials, for regular season varsity games, for better than 20 years. I think we're getting real close to 5 finally being the standard,(which exists for post-season) but thoughts of going to 6, or 7 man configurations are little more than wishful thinking.

[HLin NC]

It will be way longer than 5 years at the high school level.

The primary reason the NFL moved the U was safety. There had been some serious injuries in the past few seasons. They had even been some discussion of putting the U in helmets to protect against head trauma.

In the NFL, they are officiating the fastest, strongest athletes in the world. While that is not to say that a high school U can't get injured, the impact is no where close to what the pro ranks face.

As ajmc mentioned, some states still don't even use 5 man crews yet.

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by HLin NC

It will be way longer than 5 years at the high school level.

The primary reason the NFL moved the U was safety. There had been some serious injuries in the past few seasons. They had even been some discussion of putting the U in helmets to protect against head trauma.

In the NFL, they are officiating the fastest, strongest athletes in the world. While that is not to say that a high school U can't get injured, the impact is no where close to what the pro ranks face.

As ajmc mentioned, some states still don't even use 5 man crews yet.

As long as most high schools associations use 5 man mechanics, then this will take a lot longer than 5 years to change. Now if they go to 7, then that might change overnight.

Peace

[Texas Aggie]

I predict they will move the U back to his normal position either this season, or at the latest, next year. Maybe even during the pre-season. This position creates a lot of problems that can't be resolved during preseason. Just a few off the top of my head:

-- this will significantly increase the time it takes to spot the ball in late game situations; right now, the U places the ball down and only has about 7 yards to go to get out of the way -- possibly only 5; in the backfield, he'll have 12-15 minimum.
-- the U asserts himself in the defensive huddle and takes care of issues in the pit; he won't be able to do that now.
-- the R follows the QB; will the U get out of his way?
-- will the R still be on the QB throwing side?
-- now 2 officials need to get out of the way on a punt/FG attempt block
-- there are many things that go on that need to be seen from the defensive side of the ball

I could probably come up with a half dozen more. Besides, they tried this a few years ago in preseason and it wasn't adopted. Why do they think it will work now?