Our speakers today are Tim Beard and Tom Ritter, who are football officials for the Southeastern Conference.  Tim is a Line Judge and Tom is a Referee.  While they both are businessmen and do have real jobs, their weekend gigs prove to be a lot more fun.  Between the two of them, Tom’s beginning his 36th year of officiating including 10 years in the OVC and 13 in the SEC and Tim’s beginning his 33^rd year with 9 years in the OVC, 2 in the SunBelt Conf. and 6 in the SEC, so these guys have seen a lot.  Their combined resumes include numerous post season NCAA playoff games in DIV I-AA and one National Championship Game, 3 SEC Championship games and 10 Bowl games. 

Both Tom and Tim are past winners of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame, Art Demmas Outstanding Official Award. And since no good official ever forgets where he came from, they are both still very involved in the high school Middle Tennessee Football Association and Tom is the assigning officer for the high school games and they both work with young officials at their weekly meetings.  Officiating is much more than what the public views during the three hour football games each week on TV. and they are going to enlighten us as to what really is behind officiating a football game.