Referee signals from Super Bowl III
 

Tommy Bell everyone. Can you guess what he is signalling?

I guess everyone was a white hat back then. Probably helped with the egos. :p Here's an article about Tommy.

Ummm...this is a baseball blog....

JJ

Well technically it's a forum. :)

Moved to Football.

So glad things have gotten more standardized and professional. I have no idea what that was.

Peace

Here's my guess...

NY 7 4–5 Johnson 32 punt, Brown fair catch. Play nullified by offsetting penalties, illegal procedure against New York and roughing the kicker against Baltimore.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sport...-iii-plays.htm

Watch some of those old, old games on YouTube. They run around like crazed court jesters, jump into piles, run towards the goal while they signal, dramatic TD signals, etc.

Definitely less hurried looking with today's mechanics.

This is a trend you can actually see in most sports compared to the past.

You could gather the same thing without benefit of the play record. The illegal procedure must've been for formation. It had to be a scrimmage play, since that was the only way a roughing-the-kicker call could be produced*; there was at that time no separate running-into-the-kicker call, but the usual practice was to signal personal foul, then the type of personal foul, regardless. Scrimmage kicks were the most likely situation for illegal formation to occur, as line players of team A wanted maximum separation from their opponents, whether to protect the kicker or to get into coverage downfield; the pro rule for position on the line hadn't yet been changed to conform to NCAA's & Fed's easier-to-administer snapper's-waist landmark, and a kicking team might be flagged for cheating back to the same degree they may have been allowed to on previous kick plays or in previous games.

There were no microphones on officials, so they were much more demonstrative than now. IIRC, it was considered a home game for the AFL team, so the referee wore a white hat as AFL officials were doing that season, while the NFL still had a black hat on their referees. The NFL later adopted the AFL's white-hatted style. Previously AFL refs had red caps.

* You could still kick following a change of possession, but good luck drawing a roughing call then!

The idea behind any (and all) evolution, is improvement, which unfortunately is not always the end, or total, result. Tanks were once considered the ultimate weapons, until someone devised countering with airplanes.

Football, especially at the professional level, has "evolved" considerably since the Colts-Giants Championship of 1958, as has the practice and requirements necessary to officiate the game. Rules, and officiating crew sizes necessary to accomodate them, have modified considerably. Communication requirements and technology has changed dramatically.

There actually was a time were (knowledgable) spectators actually understood ALL the signals given by field officials, without being told by "Common-tators" what (they thought) everything meant.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves, what we see today is definitely DIFFERENT, but whether it proves to be an IMPROVEMENT won't be decided until people from the future look back and say so.

Was a loaf of bread at $0.15, back in the day, a better deal than $2.50 today, (all things considered) or just different?

First of all, when the merger deal was one, the NFL took over the administrating of the officials in both leagues in the 1968 season. The Super Bowl R's alternated NFL/AFL until the merger took full effect - Bell was an NFL official.

The first two SB's, the officials wore specially designed unis, as the AFL was still wearing their red hat/red stripe unis. Once Art McNally's office took over both officiating groups in !968 both leagues wore the same - 'normal' - uniforms.


Try and watch old baseball videos/films, and see some of THEIR mechanics - the credo of making fast calls was definitely in place there too. We can thank Doug Harvey for slowing everything down everywhere!

Please post a link for us! :)

I know little of the evolution of this avocation we call officiating before roughly 2000, but I wonder how much of the "flailing around" we see in the past was a result of no instant replay, no reviews, no wireless radio to the PA, and limited zoom resolution for the press box. When you only have one shot to deliver your message via hand signals, you'll probably tend to be just as emphatic.

Frankly, I like the reserved professionalism we see in good officials now even in the amateur ranks.