TIME’s Sean Gregory spoke this morning with Jerry Frump, a longtime college-football referee who served as a replacement ref during the recent NFL labor dispute. A complete transcript is now live at Keeping Score. For now, here’s a brief excerpt from the interview, focusing on Frump’s training and his colleagues: Sean Gregory: Where were you the night before your first preseason game, and how did that go? Jerry Frump: It was certainly a little bit of tension and a little bit of nervousness, but — I don’t want this to come across the wrong way, but — I remember I made the transition from Division III to Division I, and it was a huge adjustment. [Frump had previously refereed in Division I-AA, a step below the highest college level, which is now known as the Football Championship Subdivision.] You hear people in baseball and other sports say, “You know, the game finally slows down, and it’s just a matter of you catching up with the game as opposed to slowing down.” And it was a big adjustment between Division III and Division I. And I remember when I [served as an NFL replacement ref] in 2001, although I was not as experienced as I would be, obviously, 10 or 14 years later, the difference between the [Division I-AA] which I had been working and the NFL wasn’t as radical as Division III to Division I. (LIST: The Most Controversial Game Endings in Sports) So working that first preseason game, I went into it confident. The biggest thing is just trying to get your crew to work as a unit. And there are a lot of things that we had not done on the field because none of us had ever worked together at that point. This was the first time we had this on-field opportunity. So it was a little ragged. There were some delays in ball administration, and we weren’t really fluid in reporting penalties and getting the ball put back into play. And as a referee, that’s always … Continue reading I Was a Replacement Ref: Inside the NFL’s 7 Weirdest Weeks