He Holds the Volume Control on the Crowd

Being an NFL referee can be a tough job.

“You get booed, your every move gets examined -- in slo-mo -- and people are always telling you that you stink,” Tony Corrente said at the Pasadena Quarterbacks Club luncheon Friday.

But there is an upside.

Corrente is the head of the crew that worked the Jacksonville-Houston game at Houston’s Reliant Stadium on Sunday. Houston’s David Carr scored on a quarterback sneak on the game’s final play, giving the Texans a 24-20 victory.

“Right after Carr scored, I get beeped from upstairs,” Corrente said. “They want to review the play to see if Carr was in. I announce that the play is being reviewed, and the crowd begins to quiet down. I go over to the monitor, and it takes me all of four seconds. I’m now the only person in the place who knows for sure that the touchdown counts.

“By now, the crowd of 70,000 is totally quiet. As I walk out to announce that the play stands, I know the crowd is going to go nuts again, and I’m thinking, ‘This is too cool.’ ”

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Trivia time: Fifty years ago, the 1953 Pasadena City College football team had an 11-0 season. PCC’s nickname is now the Lancers. What was it then?

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Stretching it: Regarding Friday’s trivia about the 25-inning game between the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers in 1984, reader Chuck Hewitt asks, “Were there 14th- and 21st-inning stretches?”

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An easy sale: Erik Morales, who heads the pay-per-view boxing card at Staples Center tonight, got a call Thursday from his wife, who had stayed home in Tijuana. She told him their satellite TV service had expired and asked him to call to get it hooked up so she could watch the fight.

A salesman took down Morales’ name and credit card number. But he must not have been paying close attention, because he then asked Morales whether he wanted to buy the Morales fight. “I’m going to be a little busy that night,” he told the salesman in Spanish, “but my wife would like to see it.”

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Outraged: Someone needs to inform the people at Channel 2 that the Raiders aren’t a Los Angeles team, so the station is not required to force-feed L.A. the Raiders every Sunday. E-mails from readers were pouring in Friday, complaining that Channel 2 was planning to show the 2-2 Raiders against the 0-3 Chicago Bears instead of Denver and Kansas City, two 4-0 teams.

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Media darlings: ESPN.com asked 18 ESPN “experts” to give their postseason baseball predictions. All but one picked the Boston Red Sox to beat Oakland. Twelve picked the Chicago Cubs over Atlanta.

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Trivia answer: Bulldogs. Pasadena City College changed its nickname to Lancers in 1954.

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And finally: The 2003 PCC team is 0-4, and two weeks ago lost to Mt. San Antonio College, 66-7.

“Things got so bad that I decided to put in an all-new punt-block team,” Coach Tom Maher said, “and we got penalized for having 14 players on the field.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.