I have mentioned it briefly but in case you didn't catch it, I referee high school football. I am the umpire on our Friday night varsity crew. At the high school level, the umpire spends all of his time in the game in the middle of the field dodging 200+ pound teenagers with helmets and full body padding.
What very few realize is that the umpire has to go to the 50 yard line on kick-offs and in some high scoring games, that can be a lot of running. For some reason, the referee profession has decided that the largest dude should be the umpire because they don't move much. I disagreed and wanted to test the hypothesis so I conducted a little experiment Friday night.
I brought my phone with me, turned on the GPS, and used the MapMyRide™ program to track the amount of walking/running I actually did in a game.
It turns out that beginning with the coin toss until we made it back to the locker room at the end of the game, I traveled 2.5 miles. That doesn't include the hour before kickoff that the referee crew paces around the perimeter of the field killing time.
If you look at the map below, you can see my migratory pattern. On any kickoffs after extra points, I have to run up the sideline along the press box. Otherwise I spend most of my time in the middle of the field. The strange path to the shed in the upper left is where we went at halftime.
Even though they are fully padded and have helmets, I've dished out a couple of hits when getting out of the way of the runner but not to this extent.
Clip credit to Anheuser Busch and their advertising agency which cannot be verified.
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