Botchan Has Officially Earned His Football Stripes

Ron Botchan is going to the “bullring.”

He’s marching toward another battleground, like those where he once suffered two broken ribs and a gash on his head that required stitches.

It’s not Pamplona, but to Botchan it’s as close as it gets.

Botchan is an NFL umpire, the most demanding officiating job on the field, and he is about to run with the bulls from the Tennessee Titans and St. Louis Rams at the Super Bowl on Sunday in Atlanta.

“You just have to get out of the way, much like a bullfighter,” Botchan said with a laugh. “The problem is when the bull gores you. You want to get gored as easily as you can and then get up.”

Botchan, 64, has been risking life and limb in the NFL for 20 years. He is the league’s most experienced and top-rated umpire and the only one, after Sunday, to work five Super Bowls.

For Botchan, the excitement has been building since the call from the league office came to his Granada Hills home on Monday.

“He’s been acting like it’s his first Super Bowl,” said Botchan’s wife, Grace, a legal secretary in Encino. “He is so thrilled. He’s been like a kid, pretty hyper.”

So when Botchan is on the Georgia Dome field in his striped jersey with No. 110 on the back, earning $20,000 for an afternoon’s work, Grace will be in the stands as she has been countless times.

She will be there as she was in New Orleans in 1986 for Super Bowl XX, the first one Botchan umpired, the one that signaled he had finally arrived in his sixth season in the league.

Botchan remembers talking to head linesman Dale Williams, a Cal State Northridge graduate and a former sports official in the Valley, in a Superdome tunnel before the game. The two became NFL officials the same year.

“We looked at each other and I said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. A few years ago, we were doing Granada Hills-San Fernando,’ ” Botchan said.

The event was memorable, if not for all the right reasons.

A timekeeping error by the officiating crew allowed Chicago to score a field goal just before halftime, which proved inconsequential in the Bears’ 46-10 rout of New England. Botchan still heard it from the peanut gallery.

“I got home and my mother-in-law pointed it out to me,” Botchan said.

The next Super Bowl assignments for Botchan came in 1993 at the Rose Bowl, 1995 in Miami and 1997 in New Orleans.

Botchan believed he might get the call for Atlanta after being assigned to the Miami-Seattle AFC wild-card game on Jan. 9 and not one of the conference title games last Sunday. The league’s top officials, Botchan said, normally work a championship game or the Super Bowl, but not both.

Make no mistake, Botchan is among the best. The league picks officials for the Super Bowl based strictly on merit. It is the ultimate recognition, the payoff for a job well done.

The four Super Bowl diamond-studded rings, the keepsake footballs with the names of the game officials engraved on one side and the lifetime memories keep him wanting for more.

Not to mention the big payday, a considerable jump from the $4,800 he earns per game during the regular season.

“I’ve been at the top for a long time,” Botchan said. “I’m not saying I don’t screw up. I just screw up less than others. I always try to get [the Super Bowl].”

Botchan and football have been linked for decades. He played linebacker at Belmont High and Occidental College, rooming with Jack Kemp and Jim Mora, coach of the Indianapolis Colts. All have remained friends.

After a stint with Mora in the Marines, mixing a little combat training with a lot of football playing, Botchan signed with the Los Angeles Chargers of the budding American Football League in 1960. He was traded to the Houston Oilers the next season and suffered a career-ending knee injury.

A black-and-white framed trading card from his AFL days lists Botchan at 6 feet 1, 238 pounds and “extremely aggressive.” Leslie, the youngest of his two daughters, acquired the card, which sits prominently in a bookshelf at home.

Botchan coached baseball and football at North Hollywood High in 1962 and later became football coach at L.A. City College, where he still teaches physical education.

He stopped coaching in 1971 and became a high school official. He moved to college ball and the Pacific 8 Conference in 1976 and to the NFL four years later.

“I progressed a lot faster than a lot of the other guys did, for some reason,” Botchan said.

Now he has to move faster than a lot of guys.

From his spot behind the defensive line, Botchan primarily watches the offensive linemen. He makes sure the center doesn’t handle the ball improperly and the interior linemen don’t jump offside or hold an opponent.

Then he has to recognize whether it’s a running or passing play, and shift positions accordingly. On a pass, he runs to the line quickly, looking for linemen down field illegally. On a run, he scurries to a safe spot, hopefully away from the ballcarrier’s path.

“Sometimes you run up to the line and it’s a screen play and you’re stuck,” Botchan said. “Now you have Jerome Bettis coming at you and you have to get out of the way fast. . . . You’re constantly getting bumped. There’s not one time you can’t be focused.”

That’s what makes umpiring so tough. No other official is in the middle of the action on every snap.

Botchan said his experience and confidence don’t diminish the stress he feels in each game. And for good reason. Every week, NFL officiating supervisors in New York scrutinize the work of each official, breaking down film of games frame by frame, searching for bad calls.

Each official has to explain in detail every penalty he assessed, not dismiss them simply as holding or illegal blocking or personal foul. The report of the game has to be thorough and, more important, accurate.

The officials are graded, from an exceptional score of seven to a poor mark of three. Too many threes and it’s back to Pop Warner leagues.

“We’re in a fishbowl,” Botchan said. “It’s not like any other profession. Let’s say you got to a dentist and he drills through your face. Who sees that? But everyone watches us.”

They watch and often hoot, although Botchan is too far from the crowds to hear. His wife, though, is not.

“I just keep my mouth shut,” she said. “I just sit there and laugh. It’s kind of fun to hear all the different comments.”

Especially when the plays are controversial, like the one involving receiver Bert Emanuel of Tampa Bay against the Rams in the NFC championship game on Sunday. Emanuel made a diving catch at the St. Louis 23 with about one minute to play and the Rams ahead, 11-6, but it was ruled incomplete.

The tip of the ball, referee Bill Carollo said, had touched the ground while Emanuel fell. The Buccaneers argued Emanuel’s knees already had touched the ground, making it a catch.

Botchan, watching at home with friends, agreed with the call.

“I knew the original call would be changed because of the interpretation of the rule,” Botchan said. “During the catch, the ground cannot help you hold on to the ball.”

Botchan is not looking for such headaches on Sunday or in the next two seasons. He plans to retire after the 2001 season, one year after a new contract between the NFL and the officials’ union takes effect. He wants to qualify for benefits under the new agreement and to leave after perhaps one more Super Bowl.

“I don’t want to go off limping,” Botchan said. “I want to go out on top.”