The law between the lines

Soon after finishing high school, T.J. Riley had a revelation. Well, maybe more of a realization, straight from the mouth of his father, longtime referee Tom Riley.

“He told me the only way I’d still be allowed to be on a football field with my lack of size is if I put on stripes,” Riley said.

Nineteen years later, Riley’s still on the field. The 39-year-old Ardmore resident has worked his way up to the Division II level as a referee. When the fall arrives, Riley will join a crew of three other Ardmore residents — Randy Tabler, Duane Christian and Robert Dalton — as officials for Lone Star Conference football games.

“For the most part we stay together; it wasn’t like that years ago,” said Dalton, 50, the head official of the group. “We know what other guys are going to do. It works out a lot better when you have a crew concept.”

Dalton and his crew, along with two alternates, will oversee about eight LSC games this season, as well as scrimmages. The LSC is their primary employer, but the group maintains independent contract status. The conference allows referees to form their own crews, which Dalton said isn’t allowed by some conferences.

The LSC will send names of referees in the area to Dalton as suggestions; he then takes the potentials to scrimmages to see how they work. Dalton has only had one crew change in eight years of working LSC games, so they’ve become quite the tight-knit group.

“The best part is you get to see a lot of really good football,” Dalton said. “You also get to get close to a lot of the guys you work with and form really good relationships. You get to go to pretty neat places and work pretty neat ball games.”

One of those places was the Division II National Semifinals last season in Maryville, Mo., where Northwest Missouri State played the University of North Alabama. Up until that point, the crew had never worked a game of such magnitude. The semifinal was broadcast on ESPN2.

“Very few officials get elected to work a playoff,” Dalton said. “I was ecstatic. I guess we did something right.”

Once the game starts, however, the feeling of ecstasy is chop-blocked by focus.

“Three things screw up a football game: too many penalties, injuries and fights,” Riley said. “We can help prevent those things.”

There’s a reason football games are so heavily officiated. Combine speed, collisions and 22 men over four quarters, and things can get overlooked. At the same time, the officials can get so engrossed in the game that little else can filter into their world of details and inches.

Riley, who graduated from Marietta High School, has officiated games for the Indians, but don’t expect him to remember much of anything about the games themselves.

“I can honestly say I concentrate on my guys but I can’t tell you what the score was or who won,” Riley said. “Things happen so fast you can’t remember where you are much less where you went to school.

“Football games have two very biased sides. We train for years; we have to be the ultimate un-bias.”

Riley said he hopes that the success of people like he, Dalton, Tabler and Christian, as well as his father — who worked as a high school and college football official for nearly 30 years — will influence another crop to become officials at the lower levels.

“We were lucky enough to be able to work a Division II semifinal, but there’s a real shortage of officials at the junior high- and high school-level,” Riley said. “I’m afraid it’s going to cause a problem if the trend keeps on.”

Riley and his co-workers have seen every level of the game from junior high to Division II. The next step could be Division I.

“I’d love to work D-I, but right now I’m concentrated on being the best referee in D-II,” Dalton said. “Personally, I hope everyone aspires to the D-I level. We work like we’re working a BCS-level game every week.”

“I’m very fortunate to be where I am, but I always want to improve,” Riley said. “I hope to get lucky enough to get a chance.”

Erik K. Horne
221-6522