Shawn Hochuli Visits OCFOA Instructional Meeting

On September 21, 2026, Orange County Football Officials Association had the honor of having Shawn Hochuli, NFL Official/Referee, address those in attendance.

Shawn reviewed his five tenets of officiating with the membership for roughly 30 minutes.  Below is a review of those tenets. It is the sincere hope and goal for all officials to find them useful and work to apply it to your approach to the game.

From Shawn Hochuli:

Become the “Go-To Guy”

• Every Referee instinctively looks to one person in ‘the moment’
• Strive to become that person
• Rules study, film study, mechanics study
• These are dry and boring, but the more ‘pain’ you can tolerate, the more you advance on the next guy (and the next guy was you, yesterday)
• Look inside and ask yourself if you are truly putting the time in that the players and coaches deserve
• For them, Friday night is their entire life – let’s show them it’s just as important to us as well

Step off the Ledge

• Shut the game down and come in with the question if you have ANY doubt we are doing something incorrectly.
• You owe it to the game and the crew to do this NOW instead of in the locker room
• The days of the Referee shooing someone away are gone – we are under too much scrutiny to let things be wrong
• It’s takes guts to step off the ledge and bring information in that might save the crew

FITFO

• Simply put, we need to Figure It The F Out
• We need to find a way to get to the right answer
• Every math equation has an answer – that’s what penalty enforcement is
• Every play had multiple angles – bring the information from your angle if it may at all lead us to the correct answer
• Again, at all levels, we are under intense scrutiny and critique – let’s find a way to get the right answer to fouls and penalty enforcement

Deal with Sudden Change

• We all make a call we wish we could have back
• It’s how we recover from those calls that marks a great official
• The next play is here – can we challenge ourselves to put the last play behind us
• THIS PLAY is a crew mantra.  This play is the ONLY play in the game
• Imagine how hard you would focus and concentrate if the game was truly only one play long
• Put that amount of focus into that one play, and then duplicate it 170 times

The CREW is always the most important thing

• Our life is made up of various CREWS – family, spouse, kids, friends, co-workers, classmates, OCFOA, the individual crew
• When in those settings, the crew is all that matters and is the most important thing
• If we lie to our crew, hide things from them, talk badly about someone in front of them – we have lost credibility and lost trust from our crewmates
• Save each other, protect each other, defend each other – raise each other up
• $2 bill = do your job first, and then help save your crewmate
• The game of officiating is all about confidence.  Be self aware enough to know when your crewmate is in his own head and needs some positive reinforcement
• Lastly, we don’t have to like each other, but if we respect each other, have love for each other, and genuinely want our crewmates to succeed – the collective naturally improves and that is ultimately good for officiating and the quality of the game.