SPOKANE, Wash. — Jesus Rivera, a football replay official with the Big Sky Conference, shuffled along the tile floor outside a meeting room at the Northern Quest Resort & Casino last week during the Big Sky Kickoff.
Rivera, under specific instruction from teammate Michael Tripp, took one small step forward with his right foot and then brought his left even. Rivera repeated the process to the left, back, forward again and then to the right, carefully navigating a series of cones placed on the floor.
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Once he successfully completed the course, Tripp instructed the blindfolded Rivera to raise his right hand, and the duo exchanged a high-5.
Randy Campbell, the Big Sky’s coordinator of football officials, watched on approvingly, laughing while other replay officials heckled and mocked Rivera and Tripp as they went through the course, an exercise designed to emphasize the importance of communication in the replay booth.
In this case, Tripp served as Rivera’s eyes during the test and provided precise instructions to keep Rivera from grazing a cone as he walked by. If he did, other officials in attendance were quick to flag the “illegal touching.”
“We're going to make mistakes, everyone knows that. The goal for me and the staff is to make sure they don't make the same mistake over and over again,” Campbell said. “That's the critical portion of that, so they're graded on every play. That's true for replay, too, back in this room, they're graded on every single play.”
Campbell said Big Sky officials saw close to 12,000 plays during the 2024 football season. The crew on the field is made up of seven officials: referee, umpire, head line judge, line judge, field judge, side judge and back judge. They have just a split-second to determine if an infraction occurred.
The replay booth includes three officials — an instant replay official, a replay communicator and an assistant replay communicator — and a replay technician (non-official). They’re able to watch replays using different broadcast camera angles (there are usually four to eight cameras at Big Sky games but up to 20 or more at major college football or NFL games) but must determine if a play needs to be reviewed before the ball is snapped on the ensuing play.
“They have time to analyze the play,” Campbell said. But he noted in the meetings that the replay official usually has time to only watch a replay twice.
“Even though with all these fast-paced offenses, it’s not easy, because once that next snap has happened, they can’t stop the game anymore,” Campbell continued. “So, there’s a lot of pressure on replay.”
If the replay officials don’t stop the game to review a call, a coach's challenge is permitted. The Big Sky had just a handful of coach's challenges last season, but most of them were when Big Sky teams played on the road against FBS opponents in games officiated by FBS officials.
The goal was and is to have zero coach's challenges. If the officials on the field and in the booth are doing their jobs perfectly, there shouldn’t be a need for a coach to stop the game to ask the officials to review a play.
And more often than not — to the dismay of many fans — Big Sky officials are making the correct decisions. They’re graded on every play and rank among the best in the FCS. The Big Sky tied for the most assignments in the FCS playoffs despite being ineligible to call games featuring Big Sky teams. The conference had an FCS-high five teams qualify for the playoffs.
“We’re really proud of that,” said Dan Satter, the Big Sky’s deputy commissioner in charge of football, “because that demonstrates that, not just from our perspective, but from the national coordinator who has literally the entire roster of FCS officials wanting to work these games, he’s choosing Big Sky officials more than any other conference.”
These meetings aid in getting all the officials, a roster featuring more than 100 guys, on the same page entering the season. For the 2025 season, there are eight points of emphasis the officials will be focusing on.
The process of determining those points starts in January, and the points of emphasis, which span all levels of college football, are approved by the American Football Coaches Association, of which Montana coach Bobby Hauck is the current president.
2025 NCAA Football Points of Emphasis
- Protection of defenseless players/targeting
- Concussions
- Pre-snap actions for offense and defense/disconcerting signals/offensive alignment
- Feigning injury
- Unsportsmanlike conduct/taunting
- Sideline control
- Pace of play, substitutions and length of game
- Illegal contact against a quarterback/passer
The points of emphasis often begin with FBS conferences, and this year is no different. For example, one FBS league last season had issues with players feigning injuries, so officials will be focusing on that concern this season.
“So they changed the rule, which is a big rule change this year, that if the official has spotted the ball and somebody comes up injured, the team either has to use a timeout or they'll lose a timeout, or if they don't have any timeouts left, it's a 5-yard penalty,” Campbell said.
That puts more onus on the officials to recognize injuries before spotting the ball. Unlike the NFL, college football doesn’t have independent staffers working as concussion spotters. That falls on team training staffs, coaches, players and, to a lesser degree, the officials. At their meetings, the officials heard from the Eastern Washington training staff to help them identify injuries.
Another focal point of this summer’s meeting — for everybody, not just the officials — was the addition of coach-to-player communication at the FCS level. For the first time this fall, coaches will be able to electronically and wirelessly communicate with one offensive and one defensive player on the field.
The quarterback and a defensive player, typically the middle linebacker, will have a green dot on their helmet marking them as the players who have communication devices built into their helmets that allow them to talk directly with a coach.
“There's certain mechanics involved with that in terms of who can be on the field with that equipment and how the operator that will be cutting off the communication device with 15 seconds left on the play clock and then turning it back on when the play is over and the ball spotted,” Satter said. “Those logistics are new at our level, and so we're fine-tuning how that works.”
That discussion was just one of the many presentations, seminars and exercises in which the officials participated during the two-day meeting, but it’s only part of their overall training. Though the officials have day jobs ranging from lawyers and bankers to teachers and business owners, they spend hours preparing for the upcoming season.
Campbell estimated officials spend 60 hours per game training in the offseason, which includes learning and re-learning the 220-page rulebook. During the season, it’s about 20 hours per week leading up to a game.
“This isn't just a job that they show up for 90 minutes before kickoff on a Saturday and then are out the door and not thinking about it again after the game until the next week's game,” Satter said. “They're putting a lot of time and effort and preparation into it. Is every call the correct one? No. But players miss plays, coaches miss plays, administrators make mistakes and officials do, as well.
“But we do have every play of every football game graded out afterward, and they are at an incredibly high rate for the number of correct calls that they've made. That said, we take the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and get better from them, and that's part of the professional development that they go through.
“The final point I'd add to all of it, though, and we've partnered with an organization called Officially Human, is to help remind everybody that underneath the black and white stripes and behind the whistle is an actual human being who is doing their best. And, while not perfect, the games can't happen without people serving in those important roles, and so we're thankful for that.”
