Cheaters!

[jchamp]

Originally Posted by Suudy

I've never had actual cheating by teams, but by the chain crew. I posted on this before, but I had the chain crew set the chains at the back of the ball for the home team, and the front of the ball for the away team.

Varsity & JV/Freshman chain crews and clock operators here (Southern Nevada) are an auxiliary crew of regular officials. In fact, usually when we have a Thursday night JV/Freshman double-header, we just swap out crews between the two games.
We haven't had visiting coaches complain about cheating chain crews, and since most coaches know we're "off-duty" officials, we occasionally get them asking us about calls. The worst problem I had was someone insisting that the umpire was giving his team an unfair spot on short yardage and demanded that I (holding the box) make the correction. I simply informed him he was addressing his complaint to the wrong person.
I did catch chain crew in a youth game cheating. After everything was set, the LTG stake holder started pulling the rear stake really subtle-like, which normally wouldn't have been noticed, except that my crew also likes to spot balls right on the 5-yard lines whenever it's close and practical. When we start second down and the LTG has moved 6 feet from the 5-yard mark where he started, the problem is quite obvious.

[Suudy]

Originally Posted by jchamp

Varsity & JV/Freshman chain crews and clock operators here (Southern Nevada) are an auxiliary crew of regular officials. In fact, usually when we have a Thursday night JV/Freshman double-header, we just swap out crews between the two games.

We have regulars who are locals, except in the one cheating case. We've even had to grab people out of the stands because the chain crew failed to show up. I wish we had enough officials to assign officials to chains. And even if we did, I wish we had the funds to afford to send them to the games.

Originally Posted by jchamp

After everything was set, the LTG stake holder started pulling the rear stake really subtle-like, which normally wouldn't have been noticed, except that my crew also likes to spot balls right on the 5-yard lines whenever it's close and practical. When we start second down and the LTG has moved 6 feet from the 5-yard mark where he started, the problem is quite obvious.

We do the same. We try to start each series on a yard line, and all drives on a major line. In the case where we caught the cheating, we had the case where we spotted the ball on a new drive on a major line. After an incomplete pass, our U noticed the box was behind the line. He scratched his head and decided to keep an eye on it. Sure enough, every time we started a new series, the box was behind the spot on the field.