Tom Higgins
CFL.ca
I have been a teacher, a coach, and a parent. I have tested students, evaluated players, and tried to assess how my kids were doing, and the job I was doing of helping them.
But I had never seen anything like this – until I became the CFL’s Director of Officiating.
In our league, every official is graded on every play in every game, week after week after week, all season long.
That means we carried out some 78,000 individual evaluations in 2010.
Seventy-eight thousand!
I have a hard time believing that number myself but the math doesn’t lie: seven on-field officials for more than 11,000 plays over the course of the season.
Officials are tested on every single play, whether they were on top of the ball or 60 yards away from it.
And they are graded across several different categories including positioning, verbal and non-verbal communication, judgment, mechanics and application of the rules.
Imagine being graded on everything you do at work, every day.
It’s a lot of work for me and our team of supervisors, and at times it can be a brutal process.
But our officials wouldn’t have it any other way because they strive to improve, every day.
And they know they have to compete.
Especially when they know there are rookies coming in, and other fellow officials looking to move up.
This year, we brought in four CFL officiating rookies, who had excelled in amateur football and at the CFL officiating school, where they were tested, again, on their mechanics, knowledge of the rules, and fitness.
That’s on top of the six rookies we brought in last season. And two veteran officials earned their first opportunities to work as head referees this year.
Our teams, like your favourite teams, strive to get better and, over the long run, that can mean getting younger.
And they face a cut down date, too. We go from six crews to five at mid-season, based on our evaluations.
So our officials keep working. Physically, in the gym. Mentally, studying the rule book. And on their own time: all CFL officials give back to amateur football, and hone their craft, by continuing to officiate amateur games.
We don’t think of officials as competitors, but while our guys pull for one another, each crew wants to be the very best.
Next week, when we publicly announce the assignments for the Eastern and Western Finals, and the ultimate prize, the Grey Cup, these crews will have emerged as our leading teams – after those 78,000 evaluations.
They’ll feel like champs, but not because they came out on top after 78,000 final scores.
And not because anybody handed them a trophy, or even applauded them.
They’ll feel like winners, as they walk off the field at Commonwealth Stadium, if they can tell themselves they did their very best, on behalf of all of us who love this game.
