Today’s interviewee is James Arnold, the GHSA’s training coordinator for officials and co-designer of the GHSA’s video review protocols to be used for the championship games at Mercedes-Benz Stadium next week. Arnold has officiated Georgia high school football for 38 years.
1. What was the process and the goal in creating the video replay rules? “The goal is to make sure the game is won or lost by the kids and the coaches. They are the ones who put in all the hard work all year to get to the finals, and they deserve that opportunity. All the GHSA officials put in a lot of work, time and effort, physical and mental, to get to the finals also, but we are human, and humans make mistakes. The best officials in the world – Power 5 NCAA and NFL officials – make mistakes, and they are corrected by video review. So, with the tech out there available to us at the high school level, why not?
“David Reynolds [another longtime official and officials trainer] and I were asked to put together a proposal of how it could work, what we would need and what we could review. We picked the brains of people smarter than us at different levels of this great sport and put it all together and sent it up the ladder to Kevin and Robin [Kevin Giddens, the GHSA’s football coordinator at the time, and Robin Hines, the GHSA’s executive director]. Robin took it to the GHSA executive committee, and they picked it apart and sent it back pretty much whole and said, ‘Do it.’ We had a mandate: Get it right, but do not slow down the game.
“So, with the go order, we went into first laying out the structure and procedures, then the equipment that would be needed. It took a few months to get there with several great meetings with the GHSA TV partners, I.J. Rosenburg and his group at Score Atlanta and the staff at GPB. Without their knowledge and video productions skills, this would not be able to happen. They are great to work with and are making available to us all the equipment and a dedicated team to get us the views we need to make this work.
“Many documents had to be put together, and David has done most of that work – full video review manual with procedures, reviewable plays guide, coaches questions guide, on-field officials handout for coaches questions, equipment guidelines manual, etc. All of this had to be put together because we were working from zero.”
2. What are the basic rules of the video replay that the GHSA will be employing next week? “We have two crews. Each has three VR crew members for every game – a sideline assistant, who is on the sidelines, and the VR communicator and the VR operator, who are in the video review box [located in the press box]. The crews will rotate every game.
“This staff is a group of several high school and college officials who still work a high school schedule, and one coach. This group has worked long and hard on many Zoom calls going over procedures and several meetings working out the structure of video review. I cannot say enough good things about this group.
“The goal is to get it right. The VR operator can call for a review at any time as they deem necessary. The coaches also have two challenges per game. If they win the challenge, they keep that challenge. If they lose that challenge, they lose one of the two challenges and a timeout. They will have the standard red flag to throw if they want to challenge. Under two minutes, all reviews come from the video review box. [Also, all reviews will be conducted in the VR box and not on the field.]
3. What should fans and players expect and not expect with the GHSA’s video replays? “If we go to video review, the replay of the play being reviewed will be played once on the video board. After that, they will go to a video review under a review screen.
“So if we go to a video review, the referee will announce, ‘The ruling on the field is ... The previous play is under review.’ The referee and another official will go to the sideline communicator, who will time the review. The referee will get the call from the VR communicator. The referee will then communicate that to the official standing next to him with the sideline communicator listening to make sure it is correct, and then the referee will announce if the play stands or is overturned.
“We did have a practice run at video review during the [Corky Kell + Dave Hunter Classic] at Mercedes-Benz Stadium at the beginning of the season, and it worked great. Our average VR time was 32 seconds. I think for a first run, the VR crews did a get job and hit the mandate: Get it right and do not slow down the game. I believe all the officials on the field will do great, and we will just be in the background, but if needed, we will be ready to help. All the players, coaches and fans deserve that.”
4. Officials associations across the state continue to deal with an on-field officials shortage, and many games again this year were moved to Thursday or Saturday to ensure that enough officials were available. What is the state of things now and what message would you like to get out? “We are recruiting new officials at a good pace right now. I think the NFHS and GHSA have done a great job of setting up a way to connect prospective officials to local associations with ‘Get in the game’ and ‘Become an official’ campaigns, which links them to local associations. But we are still way short, and it’s going to take a long time to get us where we want to be in officials staffs. It takes two to three years as an average for new officials to get ready for a Friday night [varsity] game. But we have great officials working every day to cover the JV, middle school and varsity games when they are available around work and family, and they put in the long hours and travel. But many have gone on to high levels – Power 5 and NFL. Take last year, the referee in the national championship game was a GHSA official [Jeff Heaser]. We have had Super Bowl GHSA officials and many in the league right now. If you want to officiate the best high school football in the country, this is the place. If you want to go to the next level in officiating, this is the place to start.” [For more information on becoming a GHSA official in any sport, click here.]
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