veryone on the crew counts players before every scrimmage play — or at least they should be doing so. For example, on a 5 man crew the Back Judge, Line Judge, and Linesman count B and the Referee and Umpire tally up team A. The wings then take the counting one step further since they are responsible for the number of team A players legally on the line.

Legally on the line

It stands to reason that if you can’t differentiate between linemen and backs, how are you going to count them? So, … let’s review the definition of a lineman.

For NFHS, go to 2-31-9:

"A lineman is any A player who is facing his opponent’s goal line with the line of his shoulders approximately parallel thereto and with his head or foot breaking an imaginary pane drawn parallel to the line of scrimmage through the waist of the snapper when the ball is snapped."

The college version (2-27-4) is a little more wordy:

Continued...