Friday saw unprecedented travel issues, with a four-hour nationwide ground stop for domestic flights in the United States.
This impacted travel plans across sports leagues, including a college football game between Ole Miss and Oklahoma, which was moved to Sunday.
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It didn’t impact any NFL teams getting to where they needed to be, but it did force the league to switch up some referee assignments.
While only three officiating crew changes were needed, one could be for the history books.
Referee Don Willard is currently set to serve as the head referee for two NFL games in the same day. It is not readily known whether this has happened before, according to The Athletic.
Willard and his crew—umpire Terry Killens, field judge Jabir Walker, and side judge Justin Larrew—will begin the day calling the Miami Dolphins-Indianapolis Colts game, set to kick off at 1 p.m. ET in Indiana.
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After the game, Willard and co. will then drive 110 miles to Cincinnati, Ohio, to call the Pittsburgh Steelers-Cincinnati Bengals game for Week 10’s “Sunday Night Football,” which begins at 8:20 p.m. ET.
Willard has been an NFL official for nine years, including officiating six playoff games. He typically serves as a side judge for Scott Novak’s crew.
The NFL made the reassignments based on driving distance from officials’ hometowns. The other two moves were to have umpire Barry Anderson take over for Alex Moore in the game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Tennessee Titans, while Duane Heydt steps in for Shawn Smith in the Carolina Panthers-New Orleans Saints NFC South battle.
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Originally, Carl Cheffers was supposed to referee the Miami-Indianapolis game, while Clete Blakeman was supposed to lead the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game.
Willard will now be the head referee for both games.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
