Here is the most current list of USA Football Camps and Seminars:

USA Football Officiating Schools

Our Officiating Schools are two-day clinics designed to improve your skills as a youth or high school football official. You will work scrimmages in crews of 5 and 7, and receive valuable feedback from NFL and Division I officials.

Registrants will participate in film review of those scrimmages. During classroom sessions, unique plays from the 2008 high school & college football season will be used to discuss mechanics, philosophy and rules applications for all levels of officiating.

Schools will be priced from $250-$300

USA Football Officiating Seminars

Our Officiating Seminars are one day classroom clinics which include breakout sessions by position and topic.  Unique plays from the 2008 high school and college season will be used to discuss mechanics, philosophy and rules applications for all levels of officiating.

Seminars will be priced from $75-$100

Meals and a USA Football gift are included for schools and seminars.

Officiating Schools; fieldwork with scrimmages

Date         City            Location

April 3-4      Phoenix, AZ         Moon Valley High School
May 8-9      Miami, FL                     university of Miami
May 15-16   Tampa, FL                   Tampa Bay Buccaneers
May 16-17   Jacksonville, FL                   Sandalwood High School
Aug. 26-28*   Blaine, MN         National Sports Center
(possible)

Officiating Seminars; classroom only

April 25      Los Angeles, CA        Santa Monica College
May 3      Green Bay, WI        Lambeau Field
May 16      Fairfax County, VA                  Oakton High School
May 30      San Ramon, CA        California High School
June 6      Pittsburgh, PA        Pittsburgh Technical Institute
June 13      Wayne, NJ        Passaic County Tech
TBD      Atlanta, GA        TBD
TBD      San Diego, CA        TBD
TBD      St. Louis, MO        St. Louis Rams Facility
TBD      Boston, MA        TBD
TBD      Baltimore, MD        North County High School
TBD      Charlotte, NC        Carolina Panthers Facility
TBD      Rochester, NY        St. John Fisher College
TBD      Seattle, WA        Seattle Seahawks Facility
TBD      Denver, CO        TBD

For more details you can visit www.usafootball.com

Here’s a part of my interview with Allen Baynes. Allen just completed his rookie season in the NFL on Tony Corriente’s crew. Allen was previously on crews in the Conference USA and Arena 1 Football before getting the call to move up to the NFL.

I asked Allen about what a typical week was for him as an NFL official. Here’s what Allen had to say:

TODD: Let’s just talk about Monday leading up to Sunday. What happens in a typical week of Allen Baynes?

ALLEN: Okay, well, it’s Monday I will usually, it’s kind of slow. I’m usually getting in from a late flight. I’m either getting in from a late flight on Sunday night or I am getting home, if it’s a late ballgame on Sunday I can’t get home on Sunday night, then I’ll take the first flight home on Monday morning to kind of get back to work and get settled in a little bit. I will finish the TV tape. At the end of the games we get a copy of the TV tape so we’ve got laptop computers, so I immediately start looking at that film and breaking that film down, and making notes of any plays or any concerns that I have. Mainly it’s my position but we’ll look at and just kind of make some notes on other plays and concerns that come up from the game. We’ll usually try to go to the gym and get some exercise, work out; I’m a little sore or whatever from the game the day before. We’ll go work out and do some stretching, stuff like that
.

Tuesday comes and we get, each week we get a copy of a DVD from the teams. And it is the coach’s tape, which is a sideline shot and an end zone shot of each play, of offense, defense and special teams. So we’ve got that tape to look at. And normally on Tuesday I will go back and look at the plays that I’ve marked from the TV tape to look at other angles of the plays and concerns that I have from the game. And then Tuesday night we will get our grade report from our supervisor, and normally they email out a preliminary report of what we did good and a couple plays that might not have been so good. They will make comments on those and obviously, those will be downgrades if they viewed something as wrong. If we called something that was not correct that’ll be an incorrect call. And if we didn’t call something that wasn’t there, or was there and we didn’t’ call it that’ll be a no call. So we get that report.

Now in our league we can respond to the downgrades, so each official will take the downgrades and go look at the TV tape and take a look at the coach’s tape that we sent. And we’ll normally send in comments to our referee and our referee will respond to the grades that we got. And whether we agree or it’s something that… Sometimes an angle that we see from one shot will show that we got the call right when they say we got it wrong. Then the league will report back to us on Wednesday. They’ll give us a final report on our grades, whether they’re going to stick with their initial grade, which is what they do most of the time, or every now and then they might say, “You’re right, we agree that that call is graded correctly.”

TODD: Do you start with a score of say, 100, at the beginning of the game and then you work your way down?

ALLEN: No.

TODD: How does the downgrading score process work?

ALLEN: We get… Yeah, we get points for good calls. If you get a downgrade for anything, if you throw a flag for a defensive pass interference and it’s not a defensive pass interference, you get an incorrect call; you get a minus 10. And then if you get a no call, which is not throwing a flag when you should have, you get a minus 6. And then you can also get a partially correct call, which is them saying, “Okay, we’ll go with you here but we don’t really like it too much,” you can get t a minus 2. Now they take all your points and they average them. You’ve got the number of plays and your number of… It’s actually a little bit complicated, and to me as a rookie I didn’t really get too deep into it. I didn’t care except looking at what they said to call or not call. Didn’t really get into the grading process that much as far as how it works and the points. But they basically divide your number of plays by your downgrades and that’s how they come up with the score for you.

TODD: Okay. And then just so we understand that, the scoring then is used for playoff selection and ranking of the officials by position?

ALLEN: Yes.

TODD: Okay. And now I would also assume that is also used as a training tool to help you improve. They wouldn’t, it’s not just simply to rank you; they want you to get better, right?

ALLEN: Absolutely. It’s not totally just negative, “You did this wrong.” They will point out good things that were done and comments about mechanics, things like that. And good decisions that were made, so it’s not all just bad grade reports. They will put some comments on good things as well.

Officiating at the professional level is serious business. You obviously must be at the top of your game to get the opportunity, but more importantly…to remain at that level. The NFL has very detailed systems to monitor and evaluate their officials and I would like to note that these systems are designed to improve the level of officiating. Every NFL official I’ve spoken with has remarked on the support they receive from the league which helps them become better officials. You might think that once you make it to the NFL you have arrived. Well, you may have arrived, but best of the best firmly believe that continuous improvement is critical to staying there.

You can reserve your copy of my upcoming book at www.profootballreferee.com/training

My most recent interview has been with a great example of a guy that is passionate about football officiating and passionate about helping other officials excel. Tony Michalek has officiated in the NFL as an umpire since 2002. Prior to his professional career, Tony worked in teh Big 10 and spent 20 years on the high school fields in Chicago, Illinois.

Tony spoke in great length about video and using film to improve your officiating skills. As you probably know, I firmly believe film review is one of the most important and critical components of improvement at any level and preparing any official for moving up the ladder. Here is an excerpt from Tony’s interview. More of the details of Tony’s interview as well as the other veteran officials and supervisors are contained in my upcoming book “Ready For Play – A Comprehensive Guide to Football Officiating.” You can get more information on the book as well as get your name on the notification list by visiting www.profootballreferee.com/training

Here’s what Tony said about the importance of video review:

TONY: For the last three years as I’ve been going around the country for USA Football, and I’ve been going to clinics and speaking engagements, I tell high school football officials that it is easier than you think. And this is what I tell them to do: Each week, when you go to a high school game, when you go to the field, take a blank disk with you. It used to be the VHS tape. Take a blank disc with you with an envelope, with it addressed, with it stamped, and with a return address. And go a little bit early and ask to find whoever’s videotaping the game, ask the athletic director if you can get a copy of tonight’s game or today’s game. And give that to them and ask them if they would do that. Give it with a slip of paper with your email address or your phone number on there. So you have the paper, you have the blank disk in there and you have the envelope, and you give that to somebody you know that will be able to handle that. And it takes a little bit of work.

And have one person from the crew do that each week. And then if you rotate people that’s fine or if you just have one person all year, and have the crew chip in for the stamps and have the crew chip in for everything, the envelopes and the blank disks. And you can do that each and every week. And by the end of the year, you might work 30 games. And if you work 30 games you’ll probably only get back maybe 15 disks. So you’ve wasted a little bit of money but at the same time you’ve got 15 disks that you can train from. So you take the disks and as soon as you get them back you want to break it down. And you want to break it down; you want to look at your position. You don’t want to look at calls; the first thing you want to do is master your mechanics. And so you look at your positioning on the field. You look at your crewmates’ positioning on the field. As the play flows watch everybody’s position. Don’t be sitting there looking for calls: “Well, you know what? That was illegal motion. Ooh, that was a hold.” That’s not what we’re trying to do first.

The first objective is to be in the right spot to make the right calls. And so every single game I see that I could help myself in my positioning, to this day. It never changes. And so you can do that and that will make you better, it helps your judgment. Because if you’re in position you can have better judgment to make a better call. And so high school officials do have the opportunity. More and more games are being televised, too. Make sure that someone on the crew is taping it so you can get that. And if that isn’t the case, find out the cable company, offer to pay, send the disk and do what you have to do.

So there’s more and more opportunities for these younger officials. Now even these youth programs are taping the games. Ask for a copy. Just say “Here’s a blank disc, here’s the envelope, can you make a copy? Burn me a copy please.” And we’re getting more and more opportunities to do that and I think that nowadays officials can become better than we did in our young years because of the availability of this stuff.

TODD: Tony, I don’t believe in short cuts in anything, but can the use of video accelerate your learning faster than if you didn’t have it?

TONY: Absolutely. Absolutely.

TODD: Any idea…? Like you mentioned, if an official can obtain 15 of his 30 games, is that equivalent to maybe an extra year’s experience?

TONY: Every official’s different on how much they will accelerate the official, but it will absolutely make you a better official. Because what you’re going to do is you’re going to be seeing the plays, you’re going to see the position. Now you’re going to know. “You know what? Michalek kept telling me that I wasn’t getting to the goal line. I thought I was getting to the goal line; I kept kind of arguing with him in my head. You know what? I wasn’t at the goal line. I was only close. And then when I got to the goal line I was standing at the pylon instead of three or four yards out. Now I’ve been able to see it.” Now I can make myself better, because now I can visualize what I did wrong, because you really don’t see yourself. Now after watching the video I can see where I was, and then as you continue to watch video what happens is you have that mental imagery that sticks with you. You watch video, you watch the plays, you’re seeing an offensive pass interference, you see it, you see it, you see it on video. And a hundred times you’ve seen it on video, now the first time it happens live it’s like you’ve seen it for the 101^st time, not the first time.

I have a great example of that: Twenty-six years of officiating, I never saw an illegal forward back during a live football game in a game that I’ve officiated. I never saw one. I’ve seen it on video, I’ve been going to clinics since 1983, I’ve always seen illegal forward passes maybe on television. I’ve seen them at clinics, on video. I never saw one in a live football game. And the very first time I saw an illegal forward back in a football game live that I was officiating, Super Bowl XLII. So the thing about it was, as soon as it happened… It wasn’t my call. And I was ready to call it, if the linesman doesn’t call it and the line judge doesn’t call it. As soon as I saw it, it was like Boom! That’s an illegal forward pass. I said to myself, “I saw that thing a hundred times but never live.” But my mind, my head thought I’d seen it a hundred times. And so that’s why video today can accelerate an official’s growth.

TODD: That’s great. Yeah, and definitely I believe it’s… And I think it is getting better but it is so widely underutilized at the lower levels. I want to ask you one question: College film is often times easier to obtain. But I find that some of the high school associations shy away from showing college film for a various number of reasons. But do you think it’s useful to the high school level?

TONY: I think you have to be careful of what you show. I don’t like the fact that there is so much fragmentation between college and high school groups. We’re very mindful of it and we want to make sure we show something that’s relevant to the high school officials. And there are plenty of plays that are relevant. We’ve always shown college plays in our association in Chicago because it was the best video; it was the clearest and the best shots. But what we did was we made sure it was relevant to what we were doing at the high school game. And you know, there are certain rules that are different. So what you have to do is don’t show something that’s not going to happen in a high school game. Don’t show something that the rule’s completely different.

When you’re breaking down for your presentation make sure you pull out plays that are relevant. I don’t show… In our USA Football clinics I don’t’ show any NFL plays. None. And that’s because it’s not relevant. OPI on Randy Moss is a lot different than a 5’9” junior in high school. So for me to show “Yeah, this is OPI,” it’s a totally different deal. So we try not to do that. But I think at college, some of the college plays you can show and you just need… Whoever’s showing them though they need to be very careful and make sure it’s relevant for a high school official and they can use it.

You can visit USA Football’s website at www.usafootball.com

SEC Commissioner Rogers Redding and Big 10 veteran referee Bill LeMonnier are my next interviews. Stay tuned for more insider’s scoop at www.profootballreferee.com/blog

you want to bring all your friends and family there to eat. You brag about how good the food is, you make recommendation off the menu. You might even know the wait staff or the chef.

Well recently I shared a some of the early interview transcripts with a few fellow officials and asked for some feedback on the content. Was it relevant, useful, or inspiring? Did my idea make sense? Was I barking up the wrong tree (or cold-trailing as my grandpa used to call it when we rabbit hunted together)?

Here is what two of my pals said about it:

“This book is a great help ,whether you are just getting into officiating or have been in it for a while. I recieved great insight as far as advancing in levels as well as how to handle family, jobs and other priorites. Thanks for writing this book, it will be invaluable for future football officals.”

– Bill Green, Louisville, KY

and here is one more:

“With a Who’s Who of football officiating, this book is a must-read for every football official around the world. The information contained in this book will help everyone from the first year pee-wee official to the one at the top of the officiating world.”

–Grant Jackson, Conway, AR

I hope football officials everywhere are enjoying this work, the interviews and at some point in the very near future…the book “READY FOR PLAY”

You can sign up for a free email course at www.profootballreferee.com.

Until next time,

Be the Best on the Field!

Todd Skaggs