First of all I want to say congratulations to the crews who were selected to officiate the 1A state championship games today. Two blow out games that seemed to play themselves. An observation I cannot help but express is associated with the Crowell vs May game. In my opinion it is unacceptable for officials who are working this late in the season to miss simple penalty enforcement opportunities. This applies to the entire crew but especially the R. A simple DPI that occurs 4 yards downfield is not a 15 yard penalty. Not only did the R direct the U to mark off the 15 yards, the U marked off 15 yards. The crew save has to go out to the L who had to come in before the next snap and get the enforcement corrected. The second occurrence was on an intentional grounding. First, the L had to flag the play rather than the R. The foul occurred at the 4 yard line. R announced it was loss of down (which is correct) enforced half the distance from the spot of the foul. Again, foul occurred at the 4, U put the ball at the 2. This is wrong. It is simply a loss of down at the spot of the fall. No additional yardage markoff.
I most certainly understand more difficult fouls but these two are simple enforcements that get missed by rookies, not those officiating a state championship game. In watching this particular game it looked as if the H & L had to keep the game management under control.
The crew who worked the Groom vs Throckmorton game did a good job. R was solid.
