When one team says "Defer", I point to the other team and say, "Receive?"

At the same time, there's a thread discussing this subject at DumCoach, and the odd thing is that fewer of the youth coaches want the referee to try to fix this up for the players than officials here want to. The attitude there is that if you're playing the game and they're coaching it, it's not up to the officials to make up for the deficiencies of either, and they don't want to be patronized regarding the choices they express.

And that is the essence of my position. We get so worried about not making a coach upset with us, then we open up that the coach that does not have the original choice getting upset with us because we made the decision for them. Same thing happens with penalty enforcement when we assume we know what is best and not ask them for their actual choice. And the other captains heard you not give the right choices and they will not tell the story the way it happened. So who cares at the end of the day what a coach really thinks if we are doing our job?

Peace

My Referee on my crew actually just asks the captain, "Do you know what you want to choose or do I need to go through the choices for you?" Then when the other captain has the second choice, he asks something like this, "Do you know what you want to do?" So if a captain states something "incorrect" then he has the opportunity to review the choices again to save them from themselves. Most of the time the first choice is extremely obvious and they only say Defer or Receive.

Peace

I wouldn't use Robert and youth coaches as something to bolster or confirm your decision.

I am not using his reference to bolster my position. Like I have said before, what you do personally is up to you and what you are comfortable with. I just think that coaches often are irrational and often do not understand why we do things as officials. I have done many things over the years that officials clearly do as the norm and had that called into question by coaches at all levels. I had a coach think that I was supposed to do more to give the last 5 seconds on a play clock during a scrimmage kick situation. I just think in this situation someone hears you, unlike many other things we might do on the field.

Peace

They say that now, yet every single one of them would be grateful if it was their captain who wins the toss and says he wants to kick.

Exactly. A common occurrence for anyone who has formulated poll questions: it's possible to manipulate answers by framing the question differently.

Q: "Do you want officials to interfere with your captain's selection at the coin toss?"

A: No!

Q: "Your captain just won the toss and elected to kick, so your opponent will get the ball to start both halves; would you like the officials to double check whether your captain really meant to defer?"

A: Yes!

Sure they want it to happen to the other team. But if it happened to them they'd throw a bigger fit than my daughter just did.

But these are not poll questions. They're discussing the issue, same as here. It's not just 1-liners.

Completely, 100%, absolutely misses the point.

Are you positive?

What, you think the problem has been that all of the people in the thread there framed the question differently from the way it's been framed here? There's no chance it's a framing problem, because it's a thorough discussion. Opp'ties were presented for clarif'n, and taken.

In fact, the thread drifted from the original question, which was, "What goes into your decision to receive the kickoff or defer when you win the coin toss?" By reply #30, the subject was broached of errors in declaring the choice -- Receive or defer By reply #47, that, and officials' handling of the choices, became the main topic -- Receive or defer .

Although some coaches were concerned only that they come out ahead or not behind in the bargain, more posts -- and longer, more detailed ones -- expressed the opinion that officials not be patronizing and allow the players to make their own right or wrong decisions. Eventually DumCoach himself waded in to say that a team might well prefer to kick off, and gave an example where he made that choice.

See for yourself.

I've seen the aftermath of what happens when a player chooses to kick instead of defer and the referee goes with it without further clarification. It was, in a word, ugly. I haven't seen an entire coaching staff that PO'd in a long time. Needless to say, they kicked off the second half from their own 25.

Despite what these few, rare, coaches desire, the majority do NOT want us to let their players make that mistake. If they want to kick, it will be made perfectly clear to us before hand. Obviously the responsibility falls on the coaches to ensure the right option is chosen however from a game management perspective, I will not let a captain elect to kick or defend a goal without it being perfectly clear that is what they want.

I read the thread. The times when a coach will exercise an unusual option at the levels I work is incredibly rare. I'll admit that in youth football there are a lot more factors that go into the choice and teams may wish to start both halves on defense. I have never seen that in my decade-plus as a white hat, BTW. Of course, I may work about 1 youth game (on average) a season. I haven't worked any this year.

I know what the coaches want to do before the coin is even tossed - I cover that in the pregame meeting with the coach. Unless the player told me that the coach changed his mind, I'm going to make sure I make eye contact with the coach and give him a chance to fix the problem before I let the captain make the wrong choice.