In gridiron football, an official is a person who has responsibility in supervising the game and ensuring conformity with the rules. During professional and most college football games, seven officials operate on the field. Since 2015, Division I college football conferences have used eight game officials; the Alliance of American Football (AAF) in its only season in 2019 and the 2020 version of XFL have used eight game officials. College games outside the Division I level use six or seven officials. Arena football, high school football, and other levels of football have other officiating systems, which use fewer than the standard seven officials. High school football played under the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) rules typically use five officials for varsity and 3, 4, or 5 for non-varsity games.
Football officials are commonly, but incorrectly, referred to collectively as referees, but each position has specific duties and a specific name: Common positions include referee (which is the lead member of the officiating team), umpire, head linesman (or down judge), line judge, field judge (or back umpire), side judge, back judge and center judge. The CFL used an eighth official (with no official position name) only during the 2018 playoffs, but that official's only responsibility was watching for head contact with the quarterback. Because the referee is responsible for the general supervision of the game, the position is sometimes referred to as head referee or crew chief.
Equipment
American football officials generally use the following equipment:
Whistle Used to signal a reminder to players that the ball is dead; i.e., that the play has ended or never began. Penalty marker or flag A bright-yellow-colored flag that is thrown on the field toward or at the spot of a foul. Officials in Canadian amateur football use an orange-colored flag; the CFL switched to yellow flags in 2022. For fouls where the spot is unimportant, such as fouls which occur at the snap or during a dead ball, the flag is typically thrown vertically. The flag is wrapped around a weight, such as sand or beans (or occasionally ball bearings, although this has been discouraged since an incident in an NFL game demonstrated that those could injure players), so that it can be thrown with some distance and accuracy and to ensure it remains in place and not moved by wind. Officials typically carry a second flag in case there are multiple fouls on a play. Officials who run out of flags when they see multiple fouls on a play may drop their hat or a bean bag instead. Bean bag Used to mark various spots that are not fouls but which may be possible spots of penalty enforcement or illegal touching of a scrimmage kick. For example, a bean bag is used to mark the spot of a fumble or the spot where a player caught a punt. It is typically colored white, blue, black, or orange, depending on the official's league, college conference, level of play, or weather conditions. Some officials' associations permit the use of pink bean bags in October to show support for cancer research during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Unlike penalty flags, bean bags may be tossed to a spot parallel to the nearest yard line, not necessarily to the actual spot. Down indicator A specially designed wristband that is used to remind officials of the current down. It commonly has an elastic loop attached to it that is wrapped around the fingers. Usually, officials put the loop around their index finger when it is first down, the middle finger when it is second down, and so on. Some down indicators use a sliding clip which shows the current down in a small window. Instead of the custom-designed indicator, some officials use two thick rubber bands tied together as a down indicator: one rubber band is used as the wristband and the other is looped over the fingers. Some officials, especially umpires, may also use a second indicator to keep track of where the ball was placed between the hash marks before the play (i.e., the right hash marks, the left ones, the midpoint between the two, or parallel to the field goal posts between the hashes). This is important when the ball is re-spotted after an incomplete pass or a foul. Game data card and writing instrument Officials write down important administrative information, such as the winner of the pregame coin-toss, charged timeouts, and scoring plays. Game data cards can be disposable paper or reusable plastic. Officials carry a small pen, pencil (with a specially-designed cap to prevent them from being jabbed by the pencil point), or marker in their shirt pocket. Stopwatch Officials will carry a stopwatch (typically a digital wristwatch) when necessary for timing duties, including keeping game time, keeping the play clock, and timing timeouts and the interval between quarters. Some officials (typically back judges) will wear a small timer on their belt that is programmed to vibrate or beep whenever the play clock is running out of time, useful if their venue has no visible play clock. Radio A 21st-century innovation has been the use of radio communication between officials, which was first adopted in NCAA football and has since expanded to all levels of the game. Each member of an officiating crew wears a radio (ranging from mass-market two-way radios to custom, encrypted systems) and a headset/earpiece and microphone. Officials use their radio to easily communicate details such as penalty attribution, the down and line to gain, position/keys, and game clock status across the field and in loud environments. At higher levels, off-field officials (such as the clock operator, replay official, and penalty reporter) are also equipped with radios and included on the same frequency as the on-field crew. Some restrictions on radio usage are enforced; for example, at the high school level officials must use a push-to-talk radio system and in certain states their use is only permitted during varsity contests.
Uniform
For ease of recognition, officials are usually clad in a black-and-white vertically striped shirt and black trousers with a thin white stripe down the side (this was formerly white knickers with black/white striped stirrup stockings or one-piece stockings). Officials also wear a black belt, black shoes, and a baseball cap. A letter indicating the role of each official appears on the back of the shirt at some levels (usually college and in some states for high school), while NFL officials have numbers with a small letter or letters above and CFL officials have solely numbers. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, an American flag was added to the shirts of NFL officials, but was removed in 2006.
The stripes were introduced in the 1920s. Prior to this, plain white shirts were worn. College football referee Lloyd Olds is credited with the idea after a quarterback mistakenly handed the ball to him.Uni Watch: How the zebra got its stripes , Slate.com The officials are colloquially called "zebras" due to their black-and-white striped shirts. In addition, officials wore white (or red) "newsboy" style hats.
During the 1940s, the NFL officials wore color-striped shirts that represented their positions; black and white for referees, red and white for umpires, orange and white for head linemen, and green and white for field judges. During most of the American Football League's existence (1960–1967), officials wore red-orange striped jerseys. Around this time, the hat style of the officials changed to the current baseball cap. The referees wore red hats, the others white, each with the AFL logo; the league switched to the standard black and white stripes emulating the elder league for their last two seasons before their merger with the NFL was completed (1968 and 1969). The red and orange look was recreated in 2009 during AFL Legacy Weekends to mark the 50th anniversary of the AFL's founding.
The original United States Football League, which played from February to July in its three-season existence from 1983 to 1985, allowed officials to wear black shorts for warm-weather games. The United Football League, which launched play in October 2009, featured officials wearing solid red polo shirts without stripes with black numbers and black pants. As no teams in the league wore red or orange, there was no prospect of a clash of colors. In 2010, the UFL switched to a customized version of the traditional black and white stripes, and wore this uniform until its 2012 shutdown.
In its single aborted season in 2019, The Alliance of American Football's officials wore shirts that are black and white on top with stripes from the middle down, white stars on the sleeves and the number on the back and on the left front pocket. The pants were black with no stripe and used the same hat system (white for the referee, black for all other officials) as all other levels of football.
Stripes on officials' shirts in high school are one inch wide and in college are two inches wide. Although in some states, high school officials wear shirts with two-inch or two and one-quarter inch stripes. NFL and CFL officials wear shirts with an uneven striping pattern. Some state officials associations have also adopted bespoke shirts with NFL-style striping patterns or solid-colored sleeves.
In 2006, the NFL completely redesigned the shirts, going to a sleeker-looking uniform which, however, no longer identified a given official's position from the front. Also new for 2006 were black pants with a white stripe down the side to be worn in cold weather instead of the traditional white knickers. These looser-fitting pants allow for layering of warmer clothes underneath. In the 2010 season, college officials and, in many states, high school officials, were given the option of wearing the black cold-weather pants. The black pants became mandatory for college officials in 2011 and for NFL and CFL officials in 2012. In 2014, several high school associations started mandating the wearing of the black slacks for varsity level games, which is now generally the convention across the country. At the sub-varsity and youth level, officials are usually permitted to wear shorts (either solid black or with a white stripe down the side, depending on association) or pants as weather and comfort permit.
From 1982 to 1986, the D-I Atlantic Coast Conference allowed officials to wear white shorts for hot weather games.
For several decades, all NFL officials wore white hats. In 1979, the referees changed to black hats with white stripes, while the other officials continued to wear white ones. Finally, in 1988, the NFL switched to the high-school and college football convention: the referee wears a white hat (with the NFL logo since Super Bowl XXXIX), and the other officials wear black hats with white stripes. This has led to referees being referred to as "white hats". It was not until 2019 that the CFL finally mirrored this convention, which had also been in use at the lower levels of football in Canada; prior to this, the referee wore a black hat, with the other officiating crew members wearing white hats with a black bill and black piping.