In gridiron football, during punts, how do officials judge where a ball went out of bounds on a punt? Sometimes it’s still many feet in the air while it reaches the sideline.
Ooh. I do this a few times a season.
The head referee (R - white hat) is behind the punter. When a punt goes out of bounds, they go stand where the punter kicked from and lock in on where the punt landed. They put a hand up and chop in (point to) the deep wing official (F or S) as they come down the sideline and cross that line between punt kicked and landing. That’s a pretty good approximation of where it crossed the side line.
(Now if the punter gets wiped out, R won’t have a good idea where the ball goes as his first priority is to officiate the hit and unpiling, but the deep wings have a very rough guess if they need to).
You can see this on TV as the F or S spots the ball. What we don’t see on TV is the R. IIRC if you watch the F or S closely as they are running, which is shown on the TV, you’ll see they are looking at the R who is far out of the TV screen. When they align with R’s line of sight to where the punt landed, the F or S stops and puts their hand up and turns to face the field, and marks where the new line of scrimmage is.
I had always wondered this. I learned something today!
I got to do this back when I was officiating high school ball. It’s fun, like doing a magic trick. Officiating punts was one of the most interesting bits of refereeing. You have to know some really obscure rules and be prepared for absolutely bonkers play. Before I had to quit, I was able to do some games as the back judge, who covers the return man. I had to get a second beanbag because you have to mark where a punt ends and have one in case there’s a muff or fumble later.