SUPER BOWL XXVII : Earned His Stripes : Schachter Was Happy to Be Invisible as the Referee in Super Bowl I

And now, from the book “Close Calls, Confessions of a NFL Referee,” by Norm Schachter, here are the top 10 things NFL officials, who like some of their zebra relatives, live in a zoo, must keep in mind:

10. It’s comforting to know you have a mother and father when the coaches tell you differently.

9. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good--but not in the long run.

8. A former ballplayer turned TV commentator will remember all the “bum calls” you made against him.

7. Don’t worry about a coach’s antics on the sideline; every coach is hired to be fired.

6. You have to be perfect the first game, then get better in every game thereafter.

5. The only time to worry about a bad game is when your dog is the only one happy to see you when you get home.

4. When a player loses it in his legs, he gains it in his mouth.

3. If you’re lucky, you’ll outlast every coach in the league.

2. Always remember that the only friends you have during a football game are the other officials--and keep an eye on them.

1. Don’t waste time second-guessing yourself--there will be millions who will do it for you.

It might be hard for some to believe, but football had officials long before there were Super Bowls. We’re talking history here, so better run a yellow flag up the pole and salute it. On this most holy of occasions, the 26th anniversary of that very first Super Bowl game, let us take a brief commercial time out to remember what it was like when officials and Super Bowls came together for the first time.

Schachter remembers the first Super Bowl, which he worked as referee, when for the only time in pro football history, the officials outnumbered each team’s players on the field, 12-11.

For Super Bowl I at the Coliseum in 1967, Schachter headed a crew of six officials and six alternates, thus setting the first Super Bowl record--for most officials.

Schachter said he isn’t really sure why there were six alternates.

“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe they thought we would all get struck by lightning or something. I just didn’t want them all to walk on the field at the same time. It might have scared somebody.”

The first Super Bowl crew included, for the record, Schachter as referee, Mike Listeski as field judge, Bernie Ulman as linesman, George Young as umpire, Jack Reader as back judge and Al Sabato as line judge. That might not have the ring of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, but sports trivia buffs will doubtless take note.

It was the first time that officials from the National Football League and the American Football League had worked together. Schachter, Listeski and Ulman were from the NFL, Young, Reader and Sabato the AFL.

Schachter, who had not met his AFL counterparts until the day before the game, had no problems with his new crewmates.

“They were good officials, same as anybody else,” Schachter said.

They also were not getting rich off the game, same as anybody else in stripes and carrying a whistle that day. Super Bowl I officials earned $750 for their work, which falls slightly short of the $8,500 payday awaiting each member of the Super Bowl XXVII crew in Pasadena.

Still, Schachter found no reason to complain, possibly because he remembers getting started as an official in 1954 and then-NFL Commissioner Bert Bell guaranteeing him seven games at $100 a game.

“All I was interested in anyway was working,” said Schachter, 76, of Westchester, a former principal in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He hung up his whistle in 1976, after Super Bowl X, but remains active as a game observer for the NFL’s officiating office.

For that first Super Bowl, though, someone thought it important that the officiating crew look good and came up with a dress code. As a result, the officials resembled a cross between a rugby referee and the guy behind the grill at In-N-Out Burgers. The pants were white with a thin black stripe down the sides. White shirts had bold black vertical stripes in the traditional zebra mode, but the short sleeves were black with white numbers. Caps were white with black bills.

Schachter said he got rid of his as soon as possible. He thinks he sent it to Canton, to the Football Hall of Fame . . . either there or to Mr. Blackwell.

“Well, you couldn’t use it again,” Schachter said. “The shirts didn’t have the usual numbers. And it looked, well, different. The league never kept them. It was just as well, too. It didn’t do a thing for me.”

As for the game itself, Green Bay’s 35-10 victory over Kansas City was so one-sided, there weren’t any difficult calls, Schachter said. Eight penalties were called for a total of 66 yards, or about half of what the Raiders can do on a good day.

Schachter said that the turning point--at least in future Super Bowl player-official relations--might have been the coin toss.

Willie Davis of the Packers yelled heads, just as he had been instructed by Green Bay Coach Vince Lombardi, who believed that the eagle side of the silver dollar weighed more. Davis chose wisely and won the toss.

Then the intrigue started.

“Davis looked at me and said as he pointed, ‘We’ll receive down at that end,’ but I told him, ‘You can only have one.’ You know, he couldn’t choose to receive and what end of the field he wanted,” Schachter said.

“Yeah, he tried to run one on me. He said, ‘Why don’t you mind your own business?’ ”

Schachter said Davis actually had pulled that scam on him before. But there was no way any funny business could go on this time, Schachter added, because the Chiefs would have blamed him for losing the game because they had started at a disadvantage.

“You blame anyone you can when you lose,” the referee said.

It’s the American way. And besides, a referee never wins. He’s never the home team and he doesn’t have fans who paint their faces in black stripes or hold up signs that say yellow is their favorite color.

Schachter went on to work as the referee in Super Bowl V and Super Bowl X before getting off the field. One of his duties as an observer is to prepare a yearly 175-question exam for the officials (it’s open book) and to put together weekly summaries on rules and mechanics.

Schachter’s rule for grading the officials in Super Bowl XXVII is simple and based on his experience.

“If they have to ask who worked the ballgame, you had a good day,” he said. “But by the time the game ends, they usually know who you are anyway.”