Ask the captain, loudly, within earshot of the coach - and be looking at the coach. Solves this non-issue rather easily.

Or just eliminate the charade entirely. I even ask the coaches what they want if they win the toss. Yes, there I go through the ceremony, but I already know what the answer is going to be.

On that note, if one team wants to defer and the other wants to receive, can we just eliminate the toss entirely? :D

I've suggested that...we know which team is going to receive and which way the other team wants to kick before we collect the captains. We had like 5 in a row like this last year. We still went through the motions.

At least we got rid of the 2nd half ritual... Progress, no?

My crew didn't do that even before the official mechanic change (unless we had an exceptionally chippy first half and wanted to talk to them). When they come out at halftime we go to the coaches or captains to confirm the one team wants to receiver (never said no) and which direction the other team wants to kick (85% away from scoreboard).

Do you still ask the scored-against team their choice to kick or receive?

Did anyone ever actually *ask* that?

In televised NCAA games, I used to see the referee look at & point to the bench, so I assumed that's what was being asked. I think if you hear the coach yelling, "Kick receive [or return] team!", you can assume that's what their team wants.

In children's games played by mostly-Fed rules, it would not be odd to have the choice to kick off taken. For many of these teams, a kickoff is a 50-50 ball, and for others they would like to kick off to avoid running up the score, even though they'd just been scored on.

The choice to kick off still (or recently) being a reasonable option in Canadian football has been discussed here.

Really, that's what you are assuming? Wow. It couldn't be the referee letting the coach know that play is about to begin again (for example, after a TV timeout)?

He's communicating with the Red Hat (TV guy), not the Head Coach.