Sure, game officials are the bane of existence and they're all out to cheat for the other team and they're incompetent and corrupt and love being the center of attention and cause eczema in laboratory rats. However, unless someone figures out how to call their own 12-men-on-the-field penalties, you kinda need them to play a football game. The participants in the Georgia Region 7-AAAA championship game found this out the hard way when the referees' association forgot to schedule officials to work the game.

Instead, the game was delayed over three hours until a 10:15 pm kickoff so officials from another game could be brought in under police escort once they finished that contest. We thought only Presidents and Boston Red Sox backup catchers qualified for this honor.

The confusion arose because there are something like 630 officiating bodies for high school referees in Georgia and schedule shifts caused all of the bodies to assume the others had this covered. We hope the kids at this game get the chance to use this excuse back at school: "Hey, I would have finished that take-home quiz, but I thought the second period class had this quiz covered. Can you wait a few hours?"

(By the way, the ref in this picture doesn't seem to be doing anything; maybe he's available on short notice?)

Lack of referees delays Rome-Sprayberry start [Atlanta Journal-Constitutional]

Contact information for this author is not available.