Earning Their Stripes

The New York Jets get a winning touchdown when an insurance company vice president rules that quarterback Vinny Testaverde crossed the goal line late in the fourth quarter. Wrong.

The New England Patriots steal a victory from the Buffalo Bills after a computer scientist calls pass interference in the end zone. Dubious.

The Detroit Lions defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in overtime when a federal civil servant can’t make heads or tails of a coin flip. Bizarre.

Is this any way to run a billion-dollar business?

The string of bad calls that has stained the NFL in recent weeks has revived the lingering debate over the use of part-timers as officials and sparked demands for the return of instant replay officiating.

It also has cast a spotlight on the 5process that goes to the core of the league’s integrity--the way the NFL recruits, hires, grades, rewards and punishes its officials.

The best work the Super Bowl.

The worst? They get fired. Quietly.

The bottom line: “If you think it’s fair, keep the flag in your pocket,” said Bama Glass, a former line judge who worked the 1986 Super Bowl and retired in 1995 after 16 years in the league. “If you know it’s fair, always throw your flag.”

By definition, such judgment calls are always susceptible to human error. And, of course, nobody’s perfect.

The NFL does not, could not, demand perfection. It does, however, demand consistency at a level that, frankly, is staggering--and, in the big picture, that’s what it gets.

Out of, on average, 156 plays and 14 penalty calls a game, the league has determined that its officials make three, sometimes four, mistakes.

Each play in every game is videotaped from several angles, then reviewed at league headquarters in New York by Jerry Seeman, the NFL’s senior director of officiating, and a staff of full-time supervisors and retired game officials.

Each NFL coach can file a weekly game report and question officials’ calls.

The reviews go on for three days. The tapes are broken down frame by frame:

Was there a penalty? Was it called? Should it have been called? Was it called correctly? Was there a non-call that should have been a call?

Officials are graded on judgment and mechanics. Judgment means, did he make the right call? Mechanics means, was he in the right position?

Each call is graded on a scale of one to seven, former officials said. A current official--speaking anonymously, saying the NFL would not let him be interviewed during the season--confirmed the process.

Apparently because of the string of botched calls in recent weeks, the league declined to make Seeman and his staff available for interviews. Also not available was George Young, the NFL’s senior vice president of football operations.

“Seven is a great call, great mechanics,” said Jim Tunney, who retired after the 1991 season, his 31st as an NFL official. “Six is good. There are lots of fours and fives.

“You get a one or two or three, you really kicked it, you made a bad call.

“Nobody wants a down grade, a one, two, three. The more of those you have, the less chance you have of getting playoff assignments.”

The 10 highest-rated officials at each position with at least one previous year of NFL experience qualify for playoff assignments. Super Bowl assignments go to the highest-rated officials at each position with five years of NFL experience.

The Super Bowl referee--the referee operates as the crew chief--must have at least five years’ experience as an NFL referee.

Each year, eight or so officials retire--or get cut.

“One call is not going to get you bounced out of the league,” Tunney said. “One bad year is not going to get you out.”

But, he said, “If you’re not measuring up time and time again, you’re out.”

Greg Aiello, an NFL spokesman, put it this way: “The point is, [officials] are held accountable, like everyone else in the NFL. If they’re not performing, we’ll find somebody else.”

Who in his right mind would willingly volunteer for such scrutiny and aggravation? Who wants to risk the public humiliation of being identified as the source of a blown call that’s replayed endlessly on big-screen TVs from coast to coast?

Who, in essence, wants to be the next Earnie Frantz, the head linesman who blew the Testaverde call on Dec. 6? Or Terry McAulay, the side judge in the Nov. 29 New England-Buffalo game? Or Phil Luckett, the referee in the Thanksgiving coin toss?

The answer: scores of driven, overachieving, Type A personalities--many of them successful professionals and executives--who simply can’t get football out of their blood.

The NFL’s 1998 roster of 113 officials includes, among others, attorneys, bankers, real estate executives, two dentists and one podiatrist. Only three of the 113 played pro football.

Each year, Seeman’s department, searching for replacements for the retiring and the fired, scouts about 180 college officials.

Most of those men--and the roster of NFL officials is, at least for now, strictly a men’s club--will have applied to the NFL after starting their officiating careers in high school ball, then working up through small college and Division I.

Typically, the NFL begins to look seriously at an official only after he has had five years of Division I experience.

“Sometimes, you see a guy who’s had two years of high school [officiating experience] apply,” Tunney said. “It’s always nice to see you’re confident but it’s a little early.”

Currently, the Pacific 10 Conference has 12 officials applying to the NFL, said Verle Sorgen, the conference’s coordinator of officiating.

About 15 of the Big Ten’s 49 officials have applied, said supervisor of officials David Parry, himself a former NFL side judge and back judge for 15 years.

The NFL has probably narrowed those 15 down to five or six, Parry said. Half went on last year to the next step, formal interviews followed by thorough background checks and psychological testing. The others, Parry said, are likely to be interviewed and checked this year.

In recent years, college officials identified by the NFL as up-and-comers increasingly have been asked to work overseas in the spring NFL Europe league.

Luckett, for instance, worked in Europe for three years, according to Aiello.

Those who are ultimately accepted into the NFL’s officiating fraternity are remunerated with a grand total of $1,431 per game, plus expenses. Twenty-year veterans make $4,330. Playoff assignments pay more.

Their dream-come-true jobs also include:

* A yearly physical.

* A clinic in brutal summer heat, in Dallas in July.

* A mini-clinic in the spring for those not regularly racking up scores of six and seven.

* And, during the season, a four-hour training session that includes a rules test and critique of each official’s last game.

There is one perk: The league pays for satellite TV for each official. Of course, that’s so the official can have his work taped for review upon arrival home.

How can it be then, with all that attention to detail, that the league has been plagued the last few weeks with such bad calls?

Perhaps the current crop of officials lacks experience and leadership.

It takes two to five years to adjust from the college to the pro game, officiating veterans said.

Red Cashion, the officiating legend who retired from the NFL after 25 seasons, said it took until his third and fourth years to “begin to think I [understood] a little better what the whole thing was about. . . .

“In college, you see a play and say, ‘Oh, he can’t catch that ball,’ or, ‘He can’t score.’ You can never say that in the NFL. Never assume that the player can’t do something. Because, in the NFL, they sometimes do.”

Through retirement and dismissals, Seeman has changed more than half the officiating roster during the eight years he has had the job.

As a practical matter, Tunney said, there’s a rookie in nearly every crew. McAulay, who made the end-zone pass interference call in the Patriots-Bills game Nov. 29, is in his first year in the league.

In some crews, Tunney said, there is a rookie and a second-year official. Four of the 16 referees are in their first or second years as referees, he added.

That lack of experience and leadership, Tunney said, “really hurts.”

In addition, others said, it’s a fact of NFL life that wailing about the officiating reaches its annual crescendo in December. In part, that’s because the playoffs are approaching and the magnitude of each game is intensified.

But, in part, it might also be because it’s at this juncture in a long season that pressure and fatigue begin to wear on players, coaches--and officials.

“It is a very long season,” Cashion said. Speaking as if he were still on the field on Sundays, he said, “We start the first of July with all this stuff. I work in my [insurance] business full time. I work seven days a week. I might be off one or two weekends out of 24 weeks.

“You’ve got a family. You’ve got to have understanding people. You can have business problems. Or officiating problems. Family problems. All those things can creep in and create ripples with [officials] of every crew.”

Would full-time officials do better? Some NFL critics say so. But a switch to full-timers is unlikely.

An NFL committee that considered the issue beginning in 1996 reported that the status ought to stay quo.

The reasoning: Even “part time,” which given a typical official’s jam-packed schedule is something of a misnomer, the problem is not that crews don’t know the rules. They know the rules. What they need is to call more games, and more often. Making them full time would not do that.

But sending them to Europe in the spring would give them more game experience--hence one of the rationales for NFL Europe.

The flaw there: Seasoning can’t guarantee infallibility.

Example A: Luckett.

Example B: Frantz, who gave Testaverde the phantom touchdown. Frantz is an 18-year NFL veteran.

That leaves instant replay.

Last Tuesday, the NFL’s competition committee voted not to bring replay back for the playoffs, believing that doing so would be tantamount to “experimenting in the postseason,” Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said.

The committee did recommend, however, that replay be reinstated for the 1999 season.

To be clear, that recommendation involves merely the concept of replay. The mechanics--the hard work of devising and implementing a system that doesn’t involve lengthy delays--remain to be worked out.

Tagliabue said last week that a consensus may be emerging for a limited replay system that focuses on sideline and end-zone calls. Those situations produce “good television pictures on a consistent basis,” he said.

The NFL used replay once before, from 1986 through 1991, then voted it out because reviews--which were done by an official in the press box--took too long.

The 1986-91 system was used for plays involving possession changes or plays governed by the sidelines, goal lines, end lines and line of scrimmage. It was not used for judgment calls such as pass interference.

In other words, if the old system had been in effect this season, replay could have corrected the Testaverde ruling but not the Steeler-Lion coin toss or the Bill-Patriot interference call.

It’s uncertain whether the system for 1999 Tagliabue spoke of last week would include end-zone interference calls.

Such a system would, however, afford review of the bad call that preceded the interference call in the Bill-Patriot game, the ruling that gave Patriot receiver Shawn Jefferson a fourth-down sideline catch and a first down at the Bill 26 with six seconds left.

The NFL acknowledged later that Jefferson had caught the ball out of bounds.

Officials uniformly said they are not opposed to replay; they simply want a system that doesn’t appreciably slow the games.

Unless and until replay returns, the NFL is stuck with three, maybe four, mistakes a game. That means the officials get it right about 98% of the time.

It also means they usually get the big calls right. Last Sunday, for instance, with 48 seconds to play, New York Giant receiver Armani Toomer outfought Denver’s Tito Paul for the ball near the back of the end zone. Touchdown, back judge Kirk Dornan ruled.

Televised replays showed that Dornan, an industrial salesman, made the correct call. New York held on for a 20-16 victory, the Broncos’ first loss of the season--and officials nationwide claimed a small measure of redemption.

Ninety-eight percent, Cashion reiterated.

“I can’t do that in my business,” he said. “I challenge virtually anybody to do it in their business.”

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Ruling Facts / The Officials

* There are 113, including 16 referees, 16 umpires, 17 head linesmen, 16 line judges, 16 back judges, 16 side judges and 16 field judges.

* Starting pay is $1,431 a game, plus expenses; 20-year veterans make $4,330.

* The average years of experience is 10.1.

The Game

* On an average of 156 plays and 14 penalty calls per game, the league has determined that its officials make, on average, three to four mistakes.

How They’re Graded

* Officials are graded on judgment and mechanics. Judgment means, did he make the right call? Mechanics means, was he in the right position?

By Position

* Referee--General oversight and control of game. Gives signals on all fouls and is final authority for rule interpretations. . . . When runner is downed, referee determines forward progress from wing official and, if necessary, adjusts final position of ball.

* Umpire--Primary responsibility to rule on players’ equipment, as well as their conduct and actions on scrimmage line.

* Head Linesman--Primarily responsible for ruling on offside, encroachment and actions pertaining to scrimmage line before or at snap.

* Line Judge--Straddles line of scrimmage on side of field opposite linesman. Keeps time of game as a backup for clock operator. Along with linesman is responsible for offside, encroachment and actions pertaining to scrimmage line before or at snap. . . . Has primary responsibility to rule whether passer is behind or beyond line of scrimmage when pass is made.

* Field Judge--Operates on same side of field as line judge, 20 yards deep. Keys on wide receiver on his side. Concentrates on path of end or back, observing legality of his potential block(s) or of actions taken against him. . . . Has primary responsibility to make decisions involving sideline on his side of field, e.g., pass receiver or runner in or out of bounds.

* Side Judge--Operates on same side of field as linesman, 20 yards deep. Keys on wide receiver on his side. Concentrates on path of end or back, observing legality of his potential block(s) or of actions taken against him. . . . Has primary responsibility to make decisions involving sideline on his side of field, e.g., pass receiver or runner in or out of bounds.

* Back Judge--Takes a position 25 yards downfield. . . . Keys on tight end, concentrates on his path and observes legality of tight end’s potential block(s) or of actions taken against him. . . . Back judge times interval between plays on 40/25-second clock plus intermission between two periods of each half. . . . Together with field judge, rules whether field goals and conversions are successful.

Who Are They?

Officials are teachers, middle managers and salesmen, a golf pro, a longshoreman, several policemen and a retired firefighter, among others.

Three of the 113 played pro football, including Gary Lane, Dean Look and Ron Botchan. Look and Lane were quarterbacks, Botchan a linebacker.

Another, Byron Boston, is the father of David Boston, an Ohio State wide receiver who could be a first-round draft pick. The league says the senior Boston will not be assigned to any games in which his son is playing.

There’s also a Pointer brother, Aaron Pointer, brother of the singing Pointer sisters, who’s in his 12th season as a head linesman. He once officiated a game at which his sisters sang the national anthem.

Here is a list by general category (they overlap, so there are more than 113 jobs on the list):

* Education--24, plus Jerry Seeman, the head of officiating, who was a teacher and school administrator before going to work for the NFL full time. Six are college professors.

* Administration and management--22.

* Sales--21, primarily insurance and real estate.

* Chief executives and independent businessmen--12.

* Finance--12, two of them bank presidents.

* Sports administration or coaching--8.

* Civil servants--6.

* Law enforcement and security--5.

* Consultants or inspirational speakers--5.

* Lawyers--3.

* Dentists--2.

* Doctors, engineers, longshoremen, computer scientists, retired firefighters and physical therapists--1 of each.

And . . .

There is one golf pro, referee Ron Blum.

On Further Review

Pittsburgh vs. Detroit

* On Nov. 26, referee Phil Luckett said the Steelers’ Jerome Bettis changed his mind on the overtime coin toss. The Lions got the ball and won the game.

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New England vs. Buffalo

* On Nov 29, the Bills’ Henry Jones was called for pass interference against Terry Glenn with no time left, setting up the Patriot’s winning touchdown.

*

New York Jets vs. Seattle

* On Dec. 6, Jet quarterback Vinny Testaverde was given a game-winning touchdown against Seattle, when he clearly was short of the goal line.

In Black and White

“One call is not going to get you bounced out of the league. One bad year is not going to get you out.” JIM TUNNEY, Retired NFL Official.

*

“In college, you see a play and say, ‘Oh, he can’t catch that ball’, or ‘He can’t score.’ You can never say that in the NFL. Never assume that the player can’t do something. Because, in the NFL, they sometimes do.” RED CASHION, Retired NFL Official.