FRANKFORT — For a guy who spent nearly two decades getting yelled at by 100,000 fans a Saturday, Todd Ransom made the Frankfort Rotary Club laugh, think and squirm in their seats all at once this week.
Ransom, a 1986 Frankfort High School graduate and Indiana University alum, spoke to the club about his 26-year career as a Division I football official — 19 of those years spent in the Big Ten Conference, where he retired from full-time on-field duty earlier this year.
Before officiating became his calling, Ransom worked alongside his grandfather, his father Tom Ransom and his uncle Jack Ransom at the family’s Kramer Lumber Company in Frankfort, a business the Ransom family has been tied to for generations. Tom Ransom, who died last September, was himself a longtime Big Ten official and a fixture of Frankfort’s Rotary and civic life for decades. Todd Ransom now works as an outside sales representative for Hahn Systems, an Indianapolis-based distributor of pneumatic and power tools (Hahn Systems).
A career built from the ground up
Ransom got his start officiating high school football in 1993, joining a Frankfort-based crew that included Don Rusk, Dave Powers, John Holden and Doug Hines after longtime official Gary Carter retired. The crew was ranked the No. 1 high school officiating crew in Indiana from 1995 through 2000, Ransom told the club.
Ransom moved into small-college ball in the late 1990s, became a supplemental official in the Mid-American Conference in 2000, and was promoted to the Big Ten staff in 2007 — the same conference where his father built a Hall of Fame career on the sidelines and later in the replay booth (Indiana Football Hall of Fame).
Over his 19 seasons in the Big Ten, Ransom said he worked 15 bowl games, with two standing out above the rest: the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game in 2011, when Wisconsin beat Michigan State 42-39 at Lucas Oil Stadium, and a 2004 Northwestern-at-Kansas game he worked alongside his father — the only father-son officiating assignment in Big Ten history, according to Ransom.
That family thread resonated in the room. One Rotarian recalled being co-captain of the 1971 Clinton Prairie football team and having Tom Ransom serve as the game’s official, remembering how the elder Ransom put the team captains at ease before the coin toss. Todd Ransom said his father was regarded as one of the top officials in the country from 1983 until his retirement in 2004, mentioning several Indiana-bred officials his father mentored who went on to work in the Big Ten, the ACC and the NFL.
Life after the whistle
Ransom worked his final game on the field this past January, closing out his Big Ten career after a 2024 knee replacement helped him finish strong. He said the conference’s current front office hasn’t valued bringing veteran field officials into replay or administrative roles, so he has spent the spring consulting — including time with Purdue head coach Barry.
Asked about officiating in the WNBA, Ransom laughed off the question, saying that’s “its own controversy” he doesn’t need.
Walking Rotarians through a real replay
The heart of Ransom’s talk was hands-on: he handed out a real, controversial Big Ten play from his career and challenged tables to work through the penalty enforcement themselves — deciding whether a sideline catch is reviewable, weighing a roughing-the-passer call against defensive pass interference, and figuring out how the game clock should be reset once replay overturns the ruling on the field. Rotarians worked through it collaboratively, correctly landing on enforcing the 15-yard roughing penalty and resetting the clock to 2:10, mirroring the real call. This exercise, from an actual game, illustrated how complicated and multi-layered one play can become when several calls stack on top of each other and officials are expected to quickly and accurately sort the play out and keep the game moving.
Ransom used the exercise to explain how modern Big Ten officiating works: crews wear headsets to confer in real time, and replay decisions are no longer made solely by the official in the stadium booth. Instead, a “Command Center” in Chicago, staffed by former officials, now makes the final call on video reviews, with the booth official mainly offering additional context. He also described the “All-30” camera — a high, above-the-press-box angle that records every Big Ten stadium from 90 minutes before kickoff until roughly an hour after the final whistle, a safeguard put in place after an on-field fight between Ohio State and Illinois players several years ago.
The Michigan-Western Michigan controversy — and AI
Ransom didn’t shy away from the officiating story dominating college football headlines this month: Michigan’s controversial 13-12 win over Western Michigan on Sept. 5, in which Big Ten replay officials put one second back on the clock after quarterback Bryce Underwood’s Hail Mary appeared to expire time, setting up a game-winning touchdown on the next play. Ransom said that, by the letter of the rulebook, Big Ten officials got the ruling right, since the game clock they use for review is the one embedded in the stadium feed — not the version broadcast on television, which is what NBC analyst Terry McAulay and viewers at home were relying on.
Still, Ransom said the sport has let technology outpace common sense, arguing officials should have simply let the result stand once the game clearly appeared over to players and fans alike.
On whether artificial intelligence could someday replace officiating crews, Ransom was skeptical. He said a camera “can see everything and knows all the rules,” but can’t communicate with coaches and players the way a human official must. He said he could envision officiating crews eventually moving off the field entirely into a video booth, but not full automation. Rotarian and current high school football official Chris Varner pointed out, if AI were used instead of officials, ‘there would be a holding call on almost every play,’ changing the game drastically, and not for the better.
A pitch for more officials
Ransom closed by weighing in on a topic close to home: Indiana high school football games are worked by five-person crews, while the Big Ten uses eight and the NFL uses seven. He argued the state should move toward at least six or seven officials per crew to close coverage gaps on the field, acknowledging that thin high school athletic budgets have kept the change from happening.