Today’s interviewee is Bill Palmer, the executive assigning secretary for the Northeast Georgia Officials Association in Elberton. Palmer has officiated Georgia high school football games for 49 years. Palmer discussed the GHSA’s decision this week to move the Class 4A and 2A playoff games to Saturday and other issues regarding playoff officiating.
Bill Palmer, NGOA football official
1. What were the main reasons behind the GHSA’s decision to push 4A and 2A playoffs to Saturday? “The first issue is the addition of first-round games this season. With Class A Private and Class A Public both having a full complement of 32 playoff teams, that increased the first-round playoff games to 128 [from 112]. The second issue is the elephant in the room – COVID-19. The virus affected officials in a number of ways. Some officials opted out for fear of close contact with players and fans at games, especially the older, more experienced officials. Other officials apparently did not have confidence that the season would actually last to the playoffs and simply did not take the time or spend the money to jump through all the hoops required to officiate in the playoffs.”
2. Is the postseason talent pool as deep this year with COVID-19? “For the most part, and speaking for our association only, we have managed to keep a majority of our experienced officials active. It took creative training by Zoom, flexible requirements and scheduling, a whole lot of individual film study, and patience in the flood of constantly changing schedules. One of the factors that may have played a role in the decreased numbers of officials available for the playoffs was the way the GHSA had to change the summer camps and clinics that traditionally are in person but had to be virtual this year. To answer the question, the talent pool might be slightly more shallow this year but not significantly.”
3. With the first round spread over two days, could that actually mean more experienced crews than in years past for the first round? “In theory yes. By playing on two nights instead of one, some crews will be assigned games on both nights. So the more experienced crews and the crews who are pre-selected to be evaluated and hope to work into the final rounds can have games on both nights and offer the state evaluators more game footage to be able to determine the best crews for the later rounds.”
4. How are officials selected for the playoffs? “Each association is allowed a certain number of crews based on the number of officials who have met all the requirements to officiate in the playoffs. That total number this year was around 50 crews. Then there are seven ‘area’ crews that are compilations of officials from different associations, mixed crews in other words. These pre-selected crews are assigned games in the first two rounds. But that leaves a lot of games to be covered in the first round, and the GHSA then assigns the remaining games to the associations to cover from the remainder of their officials who are not on one of the pre-selected crews. No games are worked by the same association that had their school in regular season, so there is a lot of travel involved.”
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