Do football officials get injured?

Sometimes, but not too often.

My worst injury came early in my career.

I was the head linesman on the visitors’ side of the field. I remember the field and the teams. It was at the Michigan Lutheran Seminary field in Saginaw, but the home team renting the field was Saginaw St. Mary, a school no longer in existence. I believe the opponent was Kingston, from the Thumb area.

On the play in question, I learned a good lesson in knowing where to be in relation to the sideline.

The play was a running play, a sweep to my side of the field. I should have been on the sideline or a foot or so out of bounds. I discovered — too late — that I was actually a yard inside the sideline.

The ball carrier had a lineman leading the sweep, and, suddenly, I had a blocker, a running back, and a tackler right in my chest. They carried me backward and into a metal fencepost.

Thankfully, I hit the post in a vertical position, so I wasn’t bent around it. But it really hurt a lot and I was sore for the next week or so.

Besides being in pain from the collision, I also had the wind knocked out of me.

My referee was immediately standing over me. Being the macho type (LOL), I was trying to get up while gasping to get my breath. The referee pushed me down and ordered me to stay there.

After a few minutes, it was determined that I was OK to continue, which I did. I did have many players during the remainder of the game asking if I was still OK. Even the fans were nice. No boos the rest of the game.

After the game, I was feeling well enough to stop at the post-game watering hole for burgers and beer.

I mention that because that is something, I feel, that no longer happens, and, perhaps, has led somewhat to the shortage and perhaps the quality of officials.

I know that officiating in the Saginaw area is/was different than that in Northeast Michigan. There are a lot more schools, thus more games, and, of course, more officials.

We had a lot of camaraderie in our Saginaw Association, and officials were very willing to help newbies.

Also, the travel distance was a lot less downstate than it is officiating up here.

In the early days of my officiating career, many of the officials met at a place called Roy’s Steakhouse after their Friday night football games. There were often 15 to 20 or more officials hanging out and discussing their games. It was a time to relax but also a time when game situations, rules, odd situations, and the like were discussed.

“Here’s what happened at my game. Did we call it correctly?”

“How would you have handled this situation?”

We learned a lot from each other in those conversations. There were often disagreements as to rule situations. Debating and discussing things made us better officials.

In the Alpena area, most of the officials live in various rural communities (my final crew had officials from Alpena, Presque Isle, Rogers City, and Hubbard Lake) and most had a decent drive home after getting back to our Alpena meeting place. By the time crews would get back to Alpena at 11 p.m. after a trip to JoBurg or Atlanta or Onaway or especially Cheboygan, everyone wanted to get home. Particularly me, as I still had a 30-minute drive, dodging deer, to get home to the south end of Hubbard Lake.

But I digress.

So back to injured officials.

The only other injury I had was really minor. I got my big toe stepped on by some big defensive tackle. The toe wasn’t broken, but it sure was sore for a while, and I lost the toenail from the foot stomp.

As an umpire, my usual position, I felt I would get run into at least once a game but, thankfully, even though I got knocked down a few times, I didn’t get hurt.

I was sure one of my crew suffered a bad injury in a game. He didn’t get hurt, and, once we knew he was OK, it was good for a lot of laughs.

It was Jerry from my first crew. He was the 6-foot, 3-inches, 375-pound guy I mentioned in an earlier article. He moved pretty good for his size.

He was chasing a play down the sidelines, moving at full speed for him, when he hit a slippery spot. His feet went out from under him forward and he went airborne. When he landed, I am sure that, if there were any local seismographs in the vicinity, they registered a small earthquake.

Jerry, surprisingly, got back up, no worse for wear, and continued to officiate the game.

Les Miller, of Hubbard Lake, has retired after 53 years officiating multiple sports around Michigan. He can be reached at theoldref@yahoo.com.