Next week, the Recreational Services staff will determine the first top 10 rankings for each flag-football league, as well as pick a game of the week.

With four divisions (men’s open, co-recreational, women’s, and residence hall), there will be much to discuss about the 175-plus flag football teams this season — especially in the crowded open league, where there is serious competition for the top spots.

“Only two games [I saw on Tuesday] were absolute blowouts,” said senior Jacob Darby, a Recreational Services supervisor during the first day of games.

Yet, many of the teams playing this week will be freshmen new to flag football. At least five of the first 24 teams to play on Tuesday were composed of freshmen, Darby said.

Recreational Services officials said they see unbalanced competition all too often in the open league, where graduate-student teams are pitted against green freshman squads.

But while the residence-hall leagues are meant for younger underclassmen, the department doesn’t decided what leagues teams are placed in and lack of parity will happen.

“It is part of the competition,” Darby said.

Sportsmanship shines

Darby, who began as an intramural sports official four years ago, said that sportsmanship in the first day of the flag-football season was great among participants.

Recreational Services is strongly emphasizing sportsmanship this year because of problems in the past.

Darby said fights and severe referee harassment have happened in flag-football games during previous years.

In order to assess a team’s sportsmanship, Recreational Services abides to system where referees evaluate every team after every game on a 1-4 scale, with 1 being the best possible rating.

Only two teams of the 24 that played Tuesday night did not get the top ranking.

“I never used to give out 1s,” he said. “ Hopefully, it’ll continue throughout the whole season.”

Rule differences come into play

The first major rule debate occurred on the first day of flag football play on Tuesday with an odd fumble that resulted in a touchback.

“There was an offensive player running with the ball [near the end zone], and he fumbled the ball,” said Jon Randle, one of the supervisors for the games that night. “It deflected off a defender and went out the side of the end zone.”

Randle said that the referees, most of whom were officiating their first games, huddled to discuss the call and eventually settled on a touchback. The key rule difference, Recreational Services officials pointed out, was that when the ball hits the ground in flag football, it is dead.

As soon as the ball touched the ground in the end zone, it was ruled a touchback.

Other news from Wednesday’s meeting:

• Sand volleyball pool play began on Tuesday night and will continue through next week, with the playoffs beginning on Sept. 21.

• Sign-ups for golf are now online, which are available on the Recreational Services website — www.recserv.uiowa.edu. The registration deadline for the event is Sept. 18 with the tournament beginning on Sept. 27.