Officially First and Foremost

“First Dowwwwwn.”

Is there any other way to begin a tale about Red Cashion?

Two words, and every pro football fan knows whom you are writing about.

Two words, and the mind recalls a ruddy face, a tree-stump body, a scrub-brush voice.

The only man in a striped shirt who ever seems to have as much fun with the game as you do.

The only man in a striped shirt unafraid to sound excited when a team advances the ball after an unusual play.

That is the only time NFL referee Mason “Red” Cashion utters his distinctive, Texas-style call, you know.

At least, the only time he thinks he does.

“It’s unconscious, but it seems like I only do it when a team has a first down created for them through a penalty, or some other unusual circumstance,” he said this week. “I don’t think I do it when a team makes a first down the regular way.”

The rest of the world is not so discerning.

As Cashion prepares to work his final postseason games before retiring after 25 NFL seasons, he cannot go anywhere without somebody shouting an imitation of that call.

“I hear it 20-30 times a week,” Cashion said.

Waiters greet him with it at restaurants. Passengers shout it from the backs of airplanes.

He was walking through the CNN building in Atlanta last year when people from a tour group across the lobby began shouting it at him.

“I hear somebody holler, ‘FirstDowwwwwn’ and I’m thinking, ‘Gawd almighty,’ ” Cashion said. “All the way across the lobby and up the stairs. Stopped the whole tour.”

Then there was the time he was teeing off at Pebble Beach when another golfer shouted “First Dowwwwwn” at him from near the clubhouse.

“I think the guy was having a drink,” Cashion said.

Cashion, a partner in an insurance firm in the central Texas town of Bryan, can no longer escape his idiosyncrasy.

“I was over in Lloyds of London, in London, negotiating one of the biggest insurance deals we’ve ever had,” he said. “Somebody sees me from the other side of the office and yells, ‘First Dowwwwwn.’

“The broker stops and looks at me and says, ‘Do you know what that means?’ I said ‘Yessir, I’m afraid I do.’ ”

He explained it to the Brits, who politely laughed.

“Which is the proper thing to do,” Cashion said. “I still don’t understand the attention it has gotten.”

Even NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue repeated the call last year at a Super Bowl speech. Cashion agreed it was a horrible imitation.

“But for a Yankee lawyer, it wasn’t too bad,” he said.

That Yankee lawyer is awfully lucky to still have the services of this back-country insurance guy, particularly in the upcoming postseason, when the champion of our national pastime could be determined by a guy just like him.

After a regular season marred by missed calls and ensuing cover-ups, Red Cashion is one referee we still believe.

He calls a good game, as evidenced by his No. 1 ranking among NFL referees last season.

Just as important to the image-conscious league, he can make us trust that game.

We believe he’s fair, so we believe the game is fair. When Red Cashion is the ref, the right team wins.

“Red has this charisma about him that gives you confidence,” said Dick Haddox, his longtime insurance partner. “He has this great sense of honor that somehow comes through.”

The first-down call is of no particular importance to any of this, except it helped everyone outside the league’s Park Avenue offices finally notice him.

For officials in other sports, this would be bad.

In the NFL, this is good.

With every helmet radio and eye shield, the game moves further from the reach of the average fan.

In little ways every Sunday, Red brings it back.

Cashion, 65, doesn’t know when he started using the first-down call, only that he has been doing it for as long as he can remember.

“Somehow, I think I wanted to say ‘Hey, I’m enthusiastic about this game. I want everybody else to be like that too,’ ” he said.

He was even doing the call back when he began his career officiating Texas small-school games.

Not that anyone noticed. Once in tiny Sommerville, Texas, after the home team lost, Cashion and Haddox were stuck in a car that was being rocked by angry townspeople. It took a police escort to save them.

“Watching Red work last year’s Super Bowl, I was thinking about those small towns,” Haddox said. “Then right before his first first-down call, everybody in the stadium started imitating him. I thought, if that not’s progress. . .”

It is the sort of progress that has completely puzzled this grandfather.

“I don’t know where all of this came from,” he said of his fame, which began only a couple of years ago. “I just cannot believe it.”

Cashion does other, smaller things that endear him to players and coaches.

You know how after every penalty, one team gets a choice of taking the penalty or the play?

If the choice if obvious, Cashion doesn’t even ask the team for its decision. He makes it for them.

“One of the early teachers that I had in the game taught me about thinking about the game, what it meant to the player, what it meant to the coach,” he said. “If I can keep a player or coach from getting embarrassed or making the wrong decision, I will.”

He tells quarterbacks when they can run out the play clock. He walks to the sidelines and explains important decisions to coaches.

He thinks the NFL should do more of that explaining to the fans.

“The league should not cover things up--I would be very much in favor of explaining as much as possible,” he said. “If we are wrong, [fans] should be told that.”

What a shame that Cashion--”I want to go out on top”--will no longer be around to provide those explanations.

Fittingly, that famous “First Dowwwwwn” is about to be replaced by two other words that will make the game a little better, but a little less human.

Instant replay.