Saturday 24 July, US
Before Saturday comes Friday.
Friday was when I travelled from San Francisco to Stockton to meet up with some of the guys. You know you are in good company, when you go out to dinner and the conversation turns to penalty enforcement and rules questions within the first 5 minutes. We talked about some of the tricky questions from the summer quizzes they had been working on. I was glad I had looked at them on the flight, coming over, so I knew what was going on.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and hung out before going to bed. We would have to get up early Saturday morning, so a good night’s sleep would be important.
The Northern California Football Conference covers 35 Junior Colleges in… well… Northern California. The 170 games – 1020 assignments – are covered by the officials at this clinic. There were more than 120 officials there and the clinic began with registration at 7AM.
Some of them came the night before and some of them had driven half the night to get there in time. All the clinicians were either Division 1 or NFL officials, including referee Pete Morelli. Some of the officials had worked JC for more than 10 years and some of them had never worked college before. They had only done high school football before.
The two organizors – Dave Curchman and Dan Romeo are both top Division one officials. A back judge in the Mountain West Conference and a referee in the Big 12, respectively. They began with some general remarks and introduced different people, including myself and I was asked to stand up and tell everybody a little bit about the European version of football and what my season was like. I appreciated tall the nice things Dave said about me in his intro.
Then it was time for the first of three break-out sessions. I followed the referees and our first session was with the umpires, looking at holding on the line and talking about how to divide front-side and back-side on sweeps. Very inspirational.
The next session was only for the referees. Pete Morelli gave a presentation on how to be a good a referee and what it takes from different perspectives. We also saw some video on roughing the passer.
The final session was with the flanks, and it focused on intentional grounding and how to uptimize the communication to make this call.
It was very interesting how the different sessions combined different groups and how we were able to deal with different topics that way. Moving people around in different meeting rooms automatically creates mini-breaks, which is good for the concentration level, but it is also extremely difficult to coordinate and arrange.
Then it was time for the 30 true/false question mechanics test and then it was lunch time.
After lunch everyone gathered in the auditorium for a joint session on the new rules. Wait a minute, you say?? New rules?? Yes, even though there is no new Rulebook, there are a few new rule, which we went through and we also talked about some conference interpretations and stuff like that, including what to do if you find yourself in a game with 29 fouls. And that was just the personal fouls and unsportsmanlikes.
We saw some more tape, talking about targeting and hitting above the shoulders. General items which were relevant for all positions. This was just as interesting as it had been all day, but this was right after lunch, and my jetlag was acting up a little bit and that’s when I heard it: And now it is time for the Rules Test!!! Oh boy!!
25 rules questions in 30 minutes without the help of the Rulebook, but plenty of help from the jetlag. Some of the questions were standard quiz questions, and some of them were very creative, like this one:
Fourth and three at the B-20 yardline. Team A is in a traditional field goal formation, with all players set, motionaless and in compliance with other rules. Prior to the snap, the left wingback A25 starts in motion towards the right sideline. When the ball is snapped, A25 is beyond the position of the snapper, moving toward the right sideline. the hlder receives the snap, pauses a split second, and while still on his knee, ROLLS the ball on the ground to A25. A25 possesses the ball at the B-22 yardline and runs to the endzone. When the ball is “rolled on the ground” to A25, the direction is forward.
I’m not sure how well I did on this test, but I did manage to get through it with a little time to spare. When you don’t have the Rulebook, you tend to just shoot from the hip and hope for the best. At least, that is what I do. By then, it was three PM and all of a sudden, the clinic was over. Just like after any other good clinic, I was ready to go work a game! 
The next days will include relaxing, getting ready for the next clinic and evaluating a couple of the Danish games on video. I’m not sure when the next blog entry will be so stay tuned.