All right, regular season is over, let's put
that behind us. Playoffs begin, best time of
the year we got super wild card weekend coming up
. So the teams are set and the officials are
set. How do the officials get determined to go
into the playoffs? Well, it's an individual evaluation
system. You have 17 officiating crews, seven officials
on each crew plus replay. They work together for
the most part throughout the season. So Bill Vinovich
crew is gonna stay together. Carl Scheffer's crew is
gonna stay together. Adrian Hill's crew is gonna stay
together in the playoffs that goes away each position that
seven officials, seven positions and each, each position
is evaluated individually. So all the side judges are
evaluated against each other, all of the back judges
, the umpires and the highest rated officials at each
position will qualify for the postseason. So you'll have
your best officials at each position and now they're evaluated
and it's important to understand it's a comprehensive evaluation system
. They're evaluated on the calls. They make the
calls, they should have made, they have no
calls that are incorrect. Hey, you should have
made that call or that was a good job not
calling a foul there because it wasn't, they're,
they're evaluated on their positioning, their mechanics, they're
even looked at their fitness, their rules knowledge,
they communicated their communication and their professionalism. And again
, all of that goes into that evaluation. So
highest rated work, lowest rated, they stay home
, they don't work. And if they're in that
lower tier over the course of several seasons, they'll
let go and they'll be turned over every year.
So talk about, well, what happens to the
crews, those seven officials that work together all year
, they go away. So when you're watching Carl
cheffers or Sean Smith out there on, on the
playoffs, it's not the same seven that they've worked
with. So now the crews were evaluated by the
team, these teams have to start over because it's
not the same seven. So maybe it's a side
judge from one crew, an umpire from a different
crew. And now they have to evaluate those because
they look at those trends. How many times does
that umpire call offensive holding? How many times is
that line judge? How tightly do they call the
line of scrimmage? All of that goes into that
preparation for the clubs, not just scouting their opponents
, scouting the officials, there is some crew continuity
. So you may see a referee in an umpire
that worked to all year on that same playoff game
or you may see the line of scrimmage officials who
work together or maybe two officials on that same sideline
. So there will be some crew continuity, but
it's not all seven. And that's so important as
we go into the postseason, alternate officials. Regular
season, there isn't an alternate official, there's not
enough officials on the staff. So if one official
gets injured, they have to go to six in
the playoffs, there's five alternate officials at every game
, so every position is covered. So if you
get an injury, you won't have to go to
six, you'll go to seven. And then when
we get to the championship games in the Super Bowl
, the top, top, top rated officials at
each position will qualify for those games and those,
you can be assured that the best officials will be
working those games. So again, a lot of
people like the crew concept, a lot of people
like the all-star concept, it's a little bit of
a combination, but the hope is you've got your
best officials out there with your best teams and we
have the best games with as little or no officiating
controversy as possible.