The 2020 Texas high school football season is officially underway, at least at the 1A through 4A levels, which means the statewide juggling act of staffing games has commenced for the Texas Association of Sports Officials.

Like everything else in life, COVID-19 has taken its toll on TASO, one of the largest professional organizations for sports officials in the country.

“We are about 1,000 members behind where we were last year,” said Bill Theodore, TASO’s Assistant Executive Director. “We have over 4,900 [football officials]. In a typical season we have about 5,800.”

Theodore didn’t feel the need to sound the alarm just yet, but did mention that without an increase in numbers there could be a need for altered schedules at the sub-varsity level.

“As of right this minute, we don’t think we’re going to experience a problem covering varsity games statewide,” he said. “But it might be an issue with sub-varsity and junior high because there are more games. Until we get started, we’re really not sure where it’s going to be.

“We’ve been working with the UIL and with the schools about rescheduling if we can’t cover them on a certain day. There may be some schools that won’t even have a junior high season because of COVID. Until we get into Week 2 or Week 3 of 1A-4A, and Week 2 or Week 3 of 5A-6A we really don’t know.”