Player requirement to be inside nine yard marks after ready for play

[Magician]

IMHO, our job is to keep the game fair and safe while running it smoothly.  (5-man crew) More flags then a parade doesn't necessarily accomplish that.
IMHO, common sense can help the game run fair and smoothly more than being a "walking rule book waiting to happen".

Over the years I've received many coach calls with gripes/complaints/questions . Those involving fouls were : 90% fouls that we called that they felt shouldn't have been; 10% were fouls they felt should have been called that were not.

This is why a good philosophy when in doubt is to not flag something (unless it's a safety issue). Grading systems for officials often give a bigger downgrade for the foul called that graded incorrect than the foul not called graded incorrect. The NFC championship game is a bad example of what that lead to, but in general you are better off not calling something in question than calling it. Call the big stuff and manage the little stuff. That is drilled into the heads of the NFL and D1 officials and not a bad philosophy to use at any level.

[KWH]

When the NCAA put the 40" clock in back in 2007, Massachusetts chose not to use it. When Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820, Maine chose to be a state and not a commonwealth.

Ralph - Didn't you tell me Massachusetts also invented the 11 minute quarter?
Along with the change to NFHS Rules in 2019 will they also be playing a 4 minute longer game???

[Ralph Damren]

Ralph - Didn't you tell me Massachusetts also invented the 11 minute quarter?
Along with the change to NFHS Rules in 2019 will they also be playing a 4 minute longer game???

My understanding is they will now have 12 minute qtrs. BUT only 3 time outs per half. They used to have 5 TOs per half which was their rationale for shaving 1 minute per period.

[NVFOA_Ump]

My understanding is they will now have 12 minute qtrs. BUT only 3 time outs per half. They used to have 5 TOs per half which was their rationale for shaving 1 minute per period.

That's correct.  So far we've been instructed that we will be "going by the book" for all of the timing rules.  No more 11 minute quarters but we will not have our 2 "extra" 30 second timeouts per team per half.  We expect that the net result will be about the same in terms of overall time to actually play per game as well as actual overall playing time for both teams.  Probably very close to the same number of plays per game as we had last year with 11 minute quarters and 5 timeouts.