Tuesday night in the “Little Theatre” at Ramapo High School was the annual meeting of Big North football coaches with Carmine Picardo, the head assigner for officials for North Jersey.
The reason for the meetings are many, but most importantly it’s for the coaches to get a look at the rule tweaks and changes that have been put in place for 2015.
Picardo and Blaine Papaccio, the head rules interpreter for NJ high school football, are well-prepared and direct. This is my 2nd year attending this meeting, and what’s striking to me is, even as Blaine and Carmine go over the plays and rules, the acknowledge a lot of stuff is judgment calls by the officials.
I know I learned a lot in just an hour or so, and I’m betting the coaches did as well. All but about 8 schools were there. The biggest thing though is what may be put in place next year.
Before the meeting began, I sat down next to Carmine and we talked for a while, one of the issues that he has been dealing with is Friday Night Football. It’s not that Carmine doesn’t like it, it’s just that he only has so many football crews to go around (around 50) and it’s gotten to the point in North Jersey where there are over 50 games on Friday night as more and more schools have added lights.
See the problem? There aren’t enough crews to do all the games.
Carmine said he was going to propose two possible alternatives for 2016, hopefully when the Super North Conference comes about (more on that later). His first idea would be to give the schools 10 weeks to play 9 games, meaning start the season a week early. Yes, this would put HS football games usually on Labor Day weekend, which is a non-starter for a lot of areas. His 2nd idea is that when a team’s schedule has them with 5 home games and 4 away games, he’s going to ask them to mandate that at least one of those games be played some other time than Friday night.
Then the presentation began. The first person to talk was Tony Karcich, the AD at St. Joe. He went over a bunch of old business. They went over the dates for the All-League meetings, and Tony mentioned the idea of adding an “all-purpose” or “open” first-team spot on the All-Division teams, and said if the coaches liked it, they could approach the Bergen County Coaches Association about adding a first-team “open” spot as well for All-County.
They talked about film exchange and making sure that the coaches shared their films with their opponents. Tony said sometimes it was hard when a team was playing out of state to get those tapes, kind of insinuating that it was hard for a public school to see film when, let’s say, a Bosco or Joes was playing out of state. Then Tony kind of caught himself and said something like, “oh wait, none of the public schools here are playing a non-public school.”
And if you need reference to that, I have a 4-part series of stories I could link to.
River Dell coach DJ Nimphius gave everyone an update on where the Super North stood. The NJAC (Northwest Jersey Athletic Conference) will vote tomorrow on whether to join the yet-unnamed Super Conference (I’m calling it the Super North) and DJ said it would take a 2/3rd vote to pass.
DJ also mentioned the possibility of the NJIC joining up. That league meets on August 31st for a first reading of the idea.
If it passes DJ said it would be the biggest high school football-only conference in America.
And now for Carmine and Blaine.
The theme was the same as last year. There is only 1 main point of emphasis: Player Safety. The initiative to make the game safer at the pro and college level has trickled down to the high school game. Officials are going to be even more vigilant on targeting, leading with the head etc. Another idea that came up last night was the “intent to punish” that got some coaches muttering, but I know what they meant. It meant the officials would be looking for that extra forearm or extra step a kid would take.
But the biggest thing is what’s going to happen next year….most likely.
There is a rule being tried out in multiple states this season changing the nature of what you normally call a “peelback” block.
Picture a punt returner, fielding the ball, then making a wide loop to his left, the tacklers pursue, but don’t see the wall set up or a blocker peeling back after being up on the line of scrimmage. The blocker catches a prospective tackler just as he turns, and sometimes pops him so hard he goes flying.
It’s hard to explain this in words. But if you’ve watched football, you know what I’m talking about.
This block is now being deemed too dangerous. Sort of. What the new rule says is that the block can still be made, but only with your arms outstretched, so you can’t lower your shoulder and level the player who can’t see you.
Carmine said the rule was only experimental now, but he “would bet his retirement check” that in 2016 it would be the rule across America.
Carmine also explained to the coaches that in order to take out some of the ambiguity of these judgment calls, that they had created an NJFOA Officiating Philosophy and Principles guidebook, which he went over some parts. Very interesting details in there, about what constitutes a flinch (offsides), when a player is truly off the field when being substituted out (he has to be 1 yard away from the sidelines), and how coaches should only get 2 yards to move around. This is all done to help the officials be more consistent.
Then the film. This year it was only 12 plays from across the country, and lots of them were, close. You had the ball arriving to a WR just at the same time as a DB, and the DB just unloading on a kid. More muttering from the coaches as they were told that would be a penalty.
But several of the plays were just common sense now. Lots of plays where a kid kept blocking for a play when a RB was heading out of bounds, or already out of bounds, like the defensive player had slowed up, and then gotten destroyed by a blindside hit.
Several times the expression was “This block had no relevance on the successful execution of a play.” Meaning, a KR is like 10 yards ahead of the field, about to score, and yet one of his teammates comes flying it and levels an opponent 15 yards behind him. That’s going to be a flag.
It will be interesting to see how much this is called, and coached for that matter.
The last topic brought up by 1 of the coaches before the meeting broke up was why in the state playoffs, teams/games are assigned officiating crews from outside the area. Like, the example was given of 2 North Jersey teams playing, and a crew showing up from the Shore. The coaches said this doesn’t make any sense, and how they liked having crews they were familiar with and were familiar with them (one non-public coach said the speed of the game was much different here and some out-of-area crews were slow to pick it up). Carmine listened and understood the question. I did too. I have heard this before. Carmine said that there really should be no fundamental difference whether the crew came from North Jersey or the Shore etc, but that it was on him, and other assigners to make sure that all the officials in NJ were acting the same. He also said too that in the state playoffs it’s possible to have teams from different areas meet, so neutral officials were preferred. He cited the example of Red Bank Catholic and St. Joes last year, and how if North Jersey officials had showed up for that game, the RBC coaches would naturally be perturbed, same if it was Shore refs.
And hey, I’ve seen this more than enough times covering games out of state, home state officials are naturally more partial to their schools. So I get it.
Carmine said it was something for the NJSIAA football committee to talk about.
And that was it, there was lots of food and water in the place, many coaches walked out with something new on their checklist.