Becoming a White Hat

[Etref]

One thing I have found I need to to when working R compared to the other positions is the need to "play detective" sometimes. Each member of the crew will have a piece of the puzzle (a foul they've called, when it happened, the result of the play, the forward pass was first touched behind or beyond around the line of scrimmage, will 5 give us a 1st etc.), but it's usually R's job to piece it all together to work out what the crew is going to do or what options need to be offered to the coach.

It's also every other member of the crew's responsibility to know if they are holding a piece of the puzzle and make sure they bring it to the party.

 

[refjeff]

The two major ingredients would be 1) is the person interested in being a referee and 2) do the leaders of the organization wish for them to be one? 

  In Ohio varsity games are worked by self-established crews, and the crew decides who the referee will be.

Sub-varsity games are most commonly worked by whoever is available, and who does what is decided before the coin toss.  Well, usually before the coin toss.

I am the R on Friday night.  I try to do something else in sub-varsity games.

[TxSkyBolt]

I’ve heard some people say that the R needs to tell the U/C how to enforce a penalty. Gone are the days we should be doing that. An Umpire needs to fully understand enforcement of all penalties without being told and mark them off with little input from the R.


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[ilyazhito]

The R might need to tell the U or C what the penalty is, so the U/C could mark it off properly, but the U/C should know how to mark the penalty off.

[Rich]

I have been a varsity HS R for about 20 years now.  Our crew's U works D3 U, as well.  He's as good as they come.

We always agree on the starting point and stopping point of a penalty enforcement (we're going from the 23 to the 38) before we split to do our thing.  Sometimes he talks, sometimes I do.  We both know what we're doing pretty well, but there can't be enough checks as we go along -- and it takes an extra 5 seconds at most.  Then while I'm reporting the foul, he signals the yardage (1, 2, or 3 fingers) to the wing and has one wing holding the enforcement spot and the other going to the succeeding spot.  The B, unless he's doing something else, is recording the foul -- he normally gets what he needs through the radios.

Now, if it's a false start or the like, it's prelim-ed to me, I signal from where I am standing, and the U spots it and we're ready for play.  All single flag fouls are prelim-ed and numbers communicated over the radios.

If there's anything I've learned the hard way is that you can't communicate too much.  I'm sure he would have the yardage right without our step of agreeing between the two of us, but it works well for us.

[Rich]

I became a white hat a year after I moved to my current state.  We self-form crews here and I worked on a crew where the R was not a rules person.  That frustrated me.  So I started my own crew. 

I brought rookies onto the crew 3 consecutive years and trained them.  2 of them are still on the crew.  4 of us have been together for over 15 years now.  The fifth is in his 5th year with us.

Depending on your location, wanting to be a white hat isn't always enough.  You have to have a crew of people who want you to be the white hat, as well.  In other places, this is handled differently.