Happy Officiating New Year! May 15 marks the new officiating season

Happy NFL Officiating New Year! Today, the officiating offseason comes to an end as mandated by their collective bargaining agreement. During the “dark period” that begins after the playoffs, the officiating department cannot contact their officials with some narrow exceptions for things like job vacancies. This allows the officials to be distraction-free during a 3½ month stretch.

During the dark period, officials do engage in officiating work, such as maintaining their fitness and teaching at a myriad of officiating clinics. Most officials will also do their own personal film and rules study as well.

Of the major American sports leagues, the NFL is the only one that has a longer off-season than in-season.

On May 15, officials typically receive “Memo #1” in their inboxes which will note the outgoing and incoming officials, provide information to conduct physicals, handle some human-resources details, and outline the rules changes.

New faces in the NFL front office

Last year, the officiating front office underwent a big overhaul. Ramon George left the field to become vice president of officiating and the NFL hired Mark Butterworth as vice president of replay.

This year there will be some new faces working in the front office:

• Mark Hittner – line of scrimmage trainer
• Bill Schuster – umpire trainer
• Gene Steratore – referee trainer
• Walt Coleman IV – coordinator coach
• Greg Adams – director of college scouting

Steratore’s hiring should not impact his work as the NFL officiating analyst for CBS. Dean Blandino oversees college football replay and also works at Fox Sports as an officiating analyst. Steratore will train and mentor referees and prospective referees. He won’t be involved in grading, so it seems that he can do both jobs.

Crews, clinics and training camps are next

George will be sending out crew assignments this month. The five new officials will soon find out their partners. With the crew assignments, we will know of any position or number changes.

We know of one position change already. George made Alex Moore a referee, elevating him from the umpire position.

Then it’s on to crew visits at training camps to give rule talks and work scrimmages. The officials also attend the annual officiating clinic, and then its on the preseason.

Football Zebras will be here this summer reporting on crew assignments and other officiating news. It isn’t quite the hoopla of Times Square on December 31, but Happy New Year!