2022-23 bowl officiating assignments

Football Zebras is obtaining the officiating assignments to the 2022-23 bowl games and reporting them here.

Bowls are distributed to the conferences in a manner than an officiating crew is not from one of the team’s conferences. The Power 5 conferences work at least 5 bowls each (including all the New Year’s Six and the National Championship) with 2 conferences getting a sixth bowl, rotated annually. The Group of 5 conferences work 3 bowls each, with one conference getting a fourth bowl. The National Championship game is officiated by the conference that does not have a school in the playoffs.

Each conference (and in cases where there are conference alliances, within that consortium) has it’s own internal criteria for determining the officials assigned to a bowl game. In some cases, a conference will consider its championship game to be equivalent to a bowl assignment, and not give those officials another postseason game.

A note of full disclosure. Football Zebras did receive a request to delay the posting of the assignments from bowl leadership in order to allow time to first inform participating schools. We offered to hold the early bowl assignments until 6 days prior to kickoff; then prior to the kickoff of the first bowl game, we will publish all the remaining assignments we have. This was a shorter timeline than what was requested, but we feel it was a fair concession to consider the interests of both sides. Although the offer was not accepted, we will hold to that publication schedule.

For the tables listed below, all times are Eastern, and the conference that assigns the officials for each game is listed in italics. Crew assignments will be added as we receive them, and to the extent available to us, we will include alternates, replay officials, and replay communicators. Officials are identified with the following symbols (the qualifying criteria is listed at the bottom of this post):

• ★ 2021-22 New Year’s Six or National Championship Game official
• ★ 2021-22 bowl game official
• MDP Mackie Development Program official, the NFL’s development and training pipeline
• PRO 2019 AAF, 2020 XFL, and/or 2021 USFL official
• CC 2022 conference championship official

Notes

Participation symbols are placed after the on-field officials — not including the alternates or replay staff — and the following criteria apply:

Officials that were assigned to cancelled bowls are still counted as earning the assignment. Alternates from last year’s bowls do not receive a star.

The Mackie Development Program run by the NFL is a development program which the league uses as a hiring pool. Officials will attend meetings and shadow NFL officials during OTAs, training camps, and preseason games. The MDP also assigns officials to college invitational all-star games — Senior Bowl, Shrine Bowl, and the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl — for evaluation purposes. Officials marked in these tables must have been in the preseason program or worked a college invitational game in the last 3 years.

The rosters of the spring pro leagues and the assignments for the 2022 conference championship games make up the remaining symbols.

Image: Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission