Post by FredFan7 on Dec 7, 2012 1:06:11 GMT -5
Referee Magazine article about the NFL white hat. I can't remember if I posted this link before, so apologies if I have. But, it's still a great read!
Who Becomes an NFL White Hat and Why
Published in Referee Magazine: October 2009 | Print | Email
Copyright© Referee Enterprises, Inc.
Important note: This article is archival in nature. Rules, interpretations, citations, mechanics and/or officiating philosophies found in this article may or may not be correct for the current year.
No other official gets as much facetime and scrutiny as an NFL referee. Many call it the “toughest job in officiating.” So how does the NFL decide who is going to be the next to wear the white hat?
By Tim Sloan
P.T. Barnum used to bill his circus as “The Greatest Show on Earth” and, at the time, it probably was: It entertained, it thrilled and it oozed intrigue. There was something for everyone. When you think about it, an NFL game evokes the same type of emotions today. Has the NFL become the greatest show on Earth? Oh, it probably has competition, but you can’t ignore the passion of its fan base. People come for a show and get one, week after week.
Common to both spectacles is a focal point: the ringmaster. He is the leader, the communicator and the brains behind the production. The ringmaster pulls it all together and makes it work — or not. The NFL calls him the referee.
Mike Pereira is the NFL’s vice president of officiating and, since 2001, has been responsible for the selection, development and performance of the 17 men who wear the white hat in the league. Others who play a key role include former NFL officials Johnny Grier, supervisor of officials; and Jerry Markbreit and Red Cashion, assistant supervisors who serve as referee trainers.
Under Pereira’s tenure, the referee’s role has transformed from being the chief arbiter of the contest to the de facto face of the NFL. Pereira is keenly aware that his referees are the people who can, through their actions and persona, single-handedly turn the opinion and reactions of the commentators, fans and participants in favor of the greater good.
So what traits does the league look for when seeking its next white hats? Is there a personality type or skill set those elite candidates need to have?
“It’s got to be someone who is respected by his fellow officials and will be respected by his crew,” Pereira explains. “There’s the dynamic of the referee knowing how to get the best out of his crew. As a side judge or a line judge, 80 percent of your value is based on what you actually call and 20 percent is that other area that involves professionalism and decisiveness. When you become a referee, I think it flips. Eighty percent of your value comes from what you do off the field, not what you do on the field. So it’s got to be someone who understands that. You need someone who knows in that role he’s got to be a teacher, a motivator and a caretaker. He’s got to help guys when they’re down and control guys when they are up. He’s got to continue to teach all year. He’s almost got to give up himself a little bit and recognize that it’s not about him, it’s more about the crew. It takes a special form of leadership to accomplish that.”
In addition to leadership, Pereira says rules knowledge, the right look and how an official carries himself are critical qualities in a potential referee.
Those skills are many of the same Pereira’s predecessor, Jerry Seeman, looked for in potentional white hats.
“We were very particular in the referee selection process,” says Seeman, a former NFL referee. “We analyzed backgrounds of the people who could potentially be white hats, including their college, Arena League and high school officiating. … Once in the NFL, we observed how they got along with people; their rules knowlege; ability to take constructive criticism; organization; and how they presented themselves.”
“You have got to be able to project yourself in a positive way,” Pereira says. “A referee can carry a crew or he can destroy a crew. If a coach is confident in a referee but the crew is struggling, he’ll still have confidence in the crew because of the weight the referee carries.”
The current NFL referees come from a variety of backgrounds.
Terry McAulay, for example, is an NFL referee with prior white hat experience at the college level. He had a distinguished career refereeing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which culminated in his assignment to the BCS championship game after the 1998 season. In the NFL, McAulay just worked his second Super Bowl since becoming white hat in 2001. There are also referees like Carl Cheffers, who became an NFL white hat this past season in his ninth year in the league. He never was a referee in D-I football but has turned out to be one of the “best athletes,” whose talents became obvious once he came in at another position, according to Pereira. And finally, there are men like Ron Winter, who refereed the national championship game twice as a Big Ten official and came to the NFL as just the right fairly-reserved arbiter the league desired at the time. Today, through the eye of the TV camera, all three get the job done, but it would be hard to imagine how their stories could be more different.
“You’ve got 17 different individuals who are referees,” Pereira says. “I think it’s important that each has his own style.”
Winter says the job he’s doing today in the NFL is not the same one he was hired on for, “… but neither is the league. It is so much faster today.” He isn’t talking about the athletes’ skill but the pace at which the game is run and how officials keep up with it. NFL officials are under great scrutiny and have had to raise their performance levels to withstand that focus. Crews have to do much more today off the field to prepare for their games than they used to and it falls mostly to the crew chief to manage it.
Winter says the weekly cycle of preparation for his crew begins Monday night when he reviews the DVD of the previous day’s game. It takes him two or three hours to watch what he and his six crewmembers do on each play and make notes of any potential issues. A major objective of the review is to prepare for what might be in the preliminary rating report the league sends to each crew on Tuesday. That report is prepared by the office staff and basically grades each official on each play. It’s finalized on Wednesday after the crews have a chance to respond to it. Those ratings are used at the season’s end to decide which crews and individuals make the postseason.
Usually, Winter says, his notes from Monday and the league’s views agree. Sometimes, though, the league has a different perspective from his on the same play. What he might see, for instance, as a good no-call, the league doesn’t, so he spends Tuesday night going through the DVD again against the rating report. He has the coaches’ video by then, in which the league shows each play with end zone and sideline views interspersed.
After the reanalysis, he holds a conference call with his crew in which they discuss the issues the league has and how they will respond to them by the 8 a.m. Wednesday morning deadline. “Sometimes we agree that we missed something and other times we decide to defend it,” Winter says.
Once the final ratings are issued later on Wednesday, he says he will contact some crewmembers to discuss specific problems and work on corrections for the future. In his estimation, he spends 15 to 18 hours reviewing the previous week’s game. But eventually the focus shifts to the next week’s game. He prepares for the meeting his crew will have when it hits town Saturday afternoon to get ready for the next day’s game.
At the stadium on Sunday, Winter and his crew follow a countdown prior to game time that would make NASA proud. It begins, he says, two hours, 15 minutes before kickoff when he visits the production trailer. A hundred minutes before game time, he meets with security for an update and then, 10 minutes later, with TV producers and each team’s PR reps to confirm the final team rosters. He and his back judge then get together with, “the orange sleeves and the green hat.” Those are two sideline production personnel with whom he coordinates commercials and video reviews, respectively. Like him, their attire is color-coded to be easily found among the masses. Then it’s time to get out on the field, meet with the coaches and get ready to play.
It’s an almost overwhelming job for any official to referee in the NFL, no matter how good he is. So nobody can waltz in from a college career directly to the referee position. They need time to adapt. “It would be remarkable to take less than two years,” to work into the crew chief job, says Pereira. Markbreit did it in one and Ed Hochuli did it in two. It took McAulay three years, even though everyone seemed to know he was headed for the job. Part of the transition is learning the ropes in the NFL, but there’s also a great deal of grooming. So proto-referees from the college ranks work another position, which is sometimes problematic.
“I went in as a side judge — and not a real strong side judge — right off the bat,” recalls McAulay. He looks back on his first season as one of many ups and downs, “… but I think they found out real early on that I was very coachable. … The second year, I was better and then I worked a conference final the third year. Then they made me a referee.”
While NFL Europe was still in operation, the NFL would select a halfdozen or so people to be referees in that league every spring, each working about half the weeks of its schedule. McAulay was one of them for two years. The objective was to teach them the position in a realistic setting under the watch of mentors. Typically, a referee would go to Europe on a Friday and work the game on Saturday night. He would then work with a mentor through the next week, in Europe, reviewing what happened and developing strategies to improve. Cashion and Markbreit spent a lot of time working over there in that role. The candidate would work another game the following Saturday before heading home, a cycle that would be repeated several times. It was immersion refereeing.
With the demise of NFL Europe after its 2007 season, developing new referees is more of a challenge.
“We still have a stockpile of officials that we know who worked over there. We’re still drawing from those guys,” Pereira says. “But it is much more difficult now to make the decision on who’s going to be a new referee than it was before. With NFL Europe, at the end of the season, I could tell you who my next referee was. I can’t tell you that now.”
Even without NFL Europe, NFL officials and potential white hats still receive training from Markbreit and Cashion. They spend time talking to the referees pretty much on a weekly basis and watching video of them.
“Jerry and I have talked every week since I became a referee,” says McAulay. “We go over issues I’ve had in my game. He really is an incredible trainer, coach — father figure. Red has been a great help, too, but they go at it from different directions.” Cheffers says that Markbreit is “blue collar,” focusing on Xs and Os, while Cashion talks about “Showtime”— how you run the game.
“There’s really no such thing as a natural in this business,” says McAulay. “I believe I started with some basic level of talent and then learned what worked for me,” with their and others’ help. He says that Cashion and Markbreit are full of useful ideas and he’s applied the ones that suit his personality.
What happens if a prospective referee who was a white hat in college washes out at the other position when he comes into the league? Pereira says it happens. One way out is to bring in another official already working in the league who has shown potential to referee but may not have been in the original plan. One such person is Cheffers.
Cheffers was exposed to officiating at an early age because his dad worked in the Pac-10. He started working high school games out of college and progressed in the Southern California junior college leagues and Divisions II and III, where he worked as a crew chief. He got into the Pac-10 as a head linesman in 1995 but worked only a partial schedule there for the next four years, filling out his calendar by refereeing in the lower divisions. Cheffers says that it’s a long process to build a full schedule in the Pac-10 because of the good officials available. Despite limited D-I exposure, good things began to happen to him in 1999.
He was invited to NFL Europe that spring as a side judge, while still working in college. Pereira told Cheffers they knew he could work the line but wanted to see how he handled a deep position. Then, Jim Blackwood, a person Cheffers barely knew but Pereira knew well, offered him a half-schedule in the Western Athletic Conference to go with his Pac-10 dates. And the Pac-10 put him to work as a side judge, too. “Without that full season of Division I in 1999,” Cheffers says, “the NFL would not have let me in.” After that season, the NFL took him on as a side judge.
Cheffers says he interviewed with Seeman, who asked him what he ultimately wanted to do in the league. Against the logic of the situation, “I told him I thought I was best suited as a referee. Mike (Pereira) was sitting in the room and heard that and Jerry (Seeman) just smiled,” he remembers.
He went to work on a crew with referee Larry Nemmers, and Cheffers says it later became clear he was the heir-apparent. “He helped me a lot,” says Cheffers. That’s another way the NFL grooms prospective referees — pairing them with great veterans. Cheffers spent five years working in NFL Europe as a referee before he made it to crew chief in the NFL. Nemmers is now his replay official.
It used to be that you knew you’d made it as a NASA astronaut when you got fitted for a spacesuit; it meant you would get a flight. In the NFL, you’ve hit it big when Markbreit invites you to his house in Illinois to talk refereeing. Between the time Cheffers was selected in April 2008 and his first game, Markbreit guesses he spent 100 hours working with him.
The initial visit in Markbreit’s living room lasted about four hours. The two talked about everything from how to be a leader to keeping your hair cut. “Jerry availed himself to me anytime, day or night,” Cheffers said.
At age 48, some 30 years after he first used a whistle and nine after Cheffers joined the league, he worked his first game as an NFL referee.
Even though some referees are chosen from within the NFL ranks with little D-I referee experience like Cheffers, with more regularity, those fresh faces are already crew chiefs.
“I’ve changed over the years. And I think because I’ve changed, the league’s changed,” Pereira says. “We always used to look for a referee from within, a guy that was a successful line judge or side judge or whatever. A guy like Ed Hochuli never refereed in college, but they could see early on that he had some traits so they made him a referee. Same with Mike Carey, he didn’t do any (college) refereeing before he started refereeing in the NFL. I now like to identify the guys who are successful as a referee in college. They have gone through a lot of nuances of the position, so they don’t have to learn where you have to look and the type of calls you have to make. … If you look at our stockpile of future referees, they are guys who have refereed in college.”
But doesn’t that involve more risk without the free trial Europe offered? What if that person doesn’t pan out? First, Pereira makes a point of having his scouts get right into the locker room and crew meetings with college candidates, watching the way they handle assignments and relate to their crews. Also, the background checks the NFL now performs make it unlikely anyone will be a nefarious dud, once selected. The third thing that helps is the preponderance of NFL officials, like McAulay, who are now coordinators in college football.
McAulay does that job in the Big East and applies the same standards among his charges that he adheres to in the NFL. Other than the level, the similarities between the pros and a big college conference are strong. Pereira can decide that if they’re good enough for McAulay to recommend, they’re good enough to take a look at.
The best way to build competence into any job is to have no shortage of qualified candidates. That is true of the NFL. Pereira has more than 100 of the world’s best officials in his stable who could be the next great white hat. And he has applications from hundreds of qualified college officials. In an earlier time, it might have been hard to get out and get a read on all of them but the network of NFL guys working as coordinators now makes that job doable. If there’s a good one out there, somebody Pereira trusts has seen that official.
And a few years from now, that official may be on his (or her) way to wearing the white hat in the NFL.
Tim Sloan, Bettendorf, Iowa, officiates high school basketball, football and volleyball.
Sidbar:
What It Takes
Meet the 17 men who wear the white hat in the NFL, listed with the year they entered the league and their first as an NFL white hat. Some had a lot of experience at the referee position before becoming an NFL crew chief and others had little. All share their opinions on the most important skill for an NFL referee/crew chief.
WALT ANDERSON, 1996
NFL White Hat: 2003
White Hat Experience: High school; Division IAA: one game.
Key Skill: Leadership. How the referee manages the crew and prepares it will determine success. Officials look to the referee to guide and direct them in all aspects of officiating and working together as a team. Those who do that effectively usually generate the most successful results for their crew and each individual.
JEROME BOGER, 2004
NFL White Hat: 2006
White Hat Experience: High school, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Conference USA, AFL, NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Be a good listener. By listening to your crewmembers, you become familiar with each member. That enables you to get to know each member and identify their skills. It also gives you an opportunity to understand what is important to that member. You can then utilize their individual skills to make the crew successful.
DON CAREY, 1995
NFL White Hat: 2009
White Hat Experience: High school and small college; Big West: one year; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership is critical because a referee’s prime responsibility is to assure a crew works at the highest level of performance and efficiency. Leadership encompasses a number of skills: preparation, communication, teaching, flexibility, understanding, resourcefulness, empathy, nurturing, etc.
MIKE CAREY, 1990
NFL White Hat: 1995
White Hat Experience: High school.
Key Skill: The ability to recognize individuals’ strengths/weaknesses, praise and polish the strengths and help develop needed skills. Instill desire and confidence to perform at our very best.
CARL CHEFFERS, 2000
NFL White Hat: 2008
White Hat Experience: High school; junior college; NCAA Division III; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership. That trait encompasses a lot of qualities that I want to have as a crew chief: good manager (getting the crew prepared and performing at our peak); striving for excellence (leading by example); good communication (with coaches, supervisors, peers); decision maker (informed and willing to decide).
WALT COLEMAN, 1989
NFL White Hat: 1995
White Hat Experience: Junior high.
Key Skill: People skills. How you handle yourself and your communication with crew, coaches, media, fans, local community and management are all extremely important to success.
TONY CORRENTE, 1995
NFL White Hat: 1998
White Hat Experience: Junior college/small college; Big West: six years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Understanding the needs that take place at a game. The two coaches, television and the NFL are turning control over to us. It’s about more than making the calls. It’s about crew cooperation and knowing the needs of the TV producers and others. … A referee needs management skills and communication skills to understand the needs of everyone involved.
SCOTT GREEN, 1991
NFL White Hat: Midseason in 2004
White Hat Experience: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference: four years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Understanding your crewmates, gaining their trust and confidence and then getting everyone to realize that we all benefit individually, if the crew is working well together.
ED HOCHULI, 1990
NFL White Hat: 1992
White Hat Experience: None.
Key Skill: Leadership. Ninety percent of being a good referee has nothing to do with the calls you make. It’s the leadership of the crew that matters most, both on and off the field. That includes teaching, motivating, counseling, supporting, praising and control.
BILL LEAVY, 1995
NFL White Hat: 2001
White Hat Experience: Big West: six years.
Key Skill: Leadership, to make the guys on your crew better individually and as a group. Bring together the rules, mechanics and philosophies that the NFL has developed to assist your crew in becoming successful.
TERRY MCAULAY, 1998
NFL White Hat: 2001
White Hat Experience: High school; Old Dominion Athletic Conference: four years; ACC: four years.
Key Skill: It’s a combination of learned behaviors that are brought to bear on creating a successful team. Those include: leadership, communication, organization, etc. The most successful referees are able to get the best out of each official and create an environment whereby the crew as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
PETE MORELLI, 1997
NFL White Hat: 2003
White Hat Experience: High school; junior college; Division II: one year; WAC: one year; Big West: 1994-95.
Key Skill: Leadership, but in actuality the qualities of leadership are the skills needed to be a successful referee. They include: commitment, communication, listen to learn, charisma, problem solving, integrity, passion, competence, courage to do what’s right.
JOHN PARRY, 2000
NFL White Hat: 2007
White Hat Experience: AFL: one game; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: I have worked hard at strong and open communication skills that speak from the heart when dealing with my crew, coaches, players and game personnel as well as being the facilitator to arm my crew for success in every aspect of the game, paying attention to the execution of all details in reference to game administration.
AL RIVERON, 2004
NFL White Hat: 2008
White Hat Experience: High school; Southern Independent Collegiate Officials Association: two years; Big East: two years; Conference USA: four years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: You must first learn the individual make-up of your crew. Learn what makes each person tick under different and sometimes difficult situations. That helps you to find the best way to communicate and get the most out of each one and allows them to perform to the best of their abilities as individuals but most importantly as a unit.
GENE STERATORE, 2003
NFL White Hat: 2006
White Hat Experience: Big East: two years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership. Letting the crew know you are willing to make the final decision when appropriate, but you are not free from mistakes. Projecting strength without being overbearing. I look at my crew as a family, and I am the head of the household. You must know each member of the crew and what type of personality he has. In order to have a close-knit family, you must be open, trustworthy and caring.
JEFF TRIPLETTE, 1996
NFL White Hat: 1999
White Hat Experience: Southern Conference; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Building a cohesive officiating crew focused on concentration, communication, respect and having fun. Getting every member of the crew to buy into that concept ensures the crew (and each official on it) can meet any challenge and be successful.
RON WINTER, 1995
NFL White Hat: 1998
White Hat Experience: Division III: four years; Big Ten: eight years.
Key Skill: Show confidence in your crew. All must believe there is nothing we can’t handle as a group.
Who Becomes an NFL White Hat and Why
Published in Referee Magazine: October 2009 | Print | Email
Copyright© Referee Enterprises, Inc.
Important note: This article is archival in nature. Rules, interpretations, citations, mechanics and/or officiating philosophies found in this article may or may not be correct for the current year.
No other official gets as much facetime and scrutiny as an NFL referee. Many call it the “toughest job in officiating.” So how does the NFL decide who is going to be the next to wear the white hat?
By Tim Sloan
P.T. Barnum used to bill his circus as “The Greatest Show on Earth” and, at the time, it probably was: It entertained, it thrilled and it oozed intrigue. There was something for everyone. When you think about it, an NFL game evokes the same type of emotions today. Has the NFL become the greatest show on Earth? Oh, it probably has competition, but you can’t ignore the passion of its fan base. People come for a show and get one, week after week.
Common to both spectacles is a focal point: the ringmaster. He is the leader, the communicator and the brains behind the production. The ringmaster pulls it all together and makes it work — or not. The NFL calls him the referee.
Mike Pereira is the NFL’s vice president of officiating and, since 2001, has been responsible for the selection, development and performance of the 17 men who wear the white hat in the league. Others who play a key role include former NFL officials Johnny Grier, supervisor of officials; and Jerry Markbreit and Red Cashion, assistant supervisors who serve as referee trainers.
Under Pereira’s tenure, the referee’s role has transformed from being the chief arbiter of the contest to the de facto face of the NFL. Pereira is keenly aware that his referees are the people who can, through their actions and persona, single-handedly turn the opinion and reactions of the commentators, fans and participants in favor of the greater good.
So what traits does the league look for when seeking its next white hats? Is there a personality type or skill set those elite candidates need to have?
“It’s got to be someone who is respected by his fellow officials and will be respected by his crew,” Pereira explains. “There’s the dynamic of the referee knowing how to get the best out of his crew. As a side judge or a line judge, 80 percent of your value is based on what you actually call and 20 percent is that other area that involves professionalism and decisiveness. When you become a referee, I think it flips. Eighty percent of your value comes from what you do off the field, not what you do on the field. So it’s got to be someone who understands that. You need someone who knows in that role he’s got to be a teacher, a motivator and a caretaker. He’s got to help guys when they’re down and control guys when they are up. He’s got to continue to teach all year. He’s almost got to give up himself a little bit and recognize that it’s not about him, it’s more about the crew. It takes a special form of leadership to accomplish that.”
In addition to leadership, Pereira says rules knowledge, the right look and how an official carries himself are critical qualities in a potential referee.
Those skills are many of the same Pereira’s predecessor, Jerry Seeman, looked for in potentional white hats.
“We were very particular in the referee selection process,” says Seeman, a former NFL referee. “We analyzed backgrounds of the people who could potentially be white hats, including their college, Arena League and high school officiating. … Once in the NFL, we observed how they got along with people; their rules knowlege; ability to take constructive criticism; organization; and how they presented themselves.”
“You have got to be able to project yourself in a positive way,” Pereira says. “A referee can carry a crew or he can destroy a crew. If a coach is confident in a referee but the crew is struggling, he’ll still have confidence in the crew because of the weight the referee carries.”
The current NFL referees come from a variety of backgrounds.
Terry McAulay, for example, is an NFL referee with prior white hat experience at the college level. He had a distinguished career refereeing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, which culminated in his assignment to the BCS championship game after the 1998 season. In the NFL, McAulay just worked his second Super Bowl since becoming white hat in 2001. There are also referees like Carl Cheffers, who became an NFL white hat this past season in his ninth year in the league. He never was a referee in D-I football but has turned out to be one of the “best athletes,” whose talents became obvious once he came in at another position, according to Pereira. And finally, there are men like Ron Winter, who refereed the national championship game twice as a Big Ten official and came to the NFL as just the right fairly-reserved arbiter the league desired at the time. Today, through the eye of the TV camera, all three get the job done, but it would be hard to imagine how their stories could be more different.
“You’ve got 17 different individuals who are referees,” Pereira says. “I think it’s important that each has his own style.”
Winter says the job he’s doing today in the NFL is not the same one he was hired on for, “… but neither is the league. It is so much faster today.” He isn’t talking about the athletes’ skill but the pace at which the game is run and how officials keep up with it. NFL officials are under great scrutiny and have had to raise their performance levels to withstand that focus. Crews have to do much more today off the field to prepare for their games than they used to and it falls mostly to the crew chief to manage it.
Winter says the weekly cycle of preparation for his crew begins Monday night when he reviews the DVD of the previous day’s game. It takes him two or three hours to watch what he and his six crewmembers do on each play and make notes of any potential issues. A major objective of the review is to prepare for what might be in the preliminary rating report the league sends to each crew on Tuesday. That report is prepared by the office staff and basically grades each official on each play. It’s finalized on Wednesday after the crews have a chance to respond to it. Those ratings are used at the season’s end to decide which crews and individuals make the postseason.
Usually, Winter says, his notes from Monday and the league’s views agree. Sometimes, though, the league has a different perspective from his on the same play. What he might see, for instance, as a good no-call, the league doesn’t, so he spends Tuesday night going through the DVD again against the rating report. He has the coaches’ video by then, in which the league shows each play with end zone and sideline views interspersed.
After the reanalysis, he holds a conference call with his crew in which they discuss the issues the league has and how they will respond to them by the 8 a.m. Wednesday morning deadline. “Sometimes we agree that we missed something and other times we decide to defend it,” Winter says.
Once the final ratings are issued later on Wednesday, he says he will contact some crewmembers to discuss specific problems and work on corrections for the future. In his estimation, he spends 15 to 18 hours reviewing the previous week’s game. But eventually the focus shifts to the next week’s game. He prepares for the meeting his crew will have when it hits town Saturday afternoon to get ready for the next day’s game.
At the stadium on Sunday, Winter and his crew follow a countdown prior to game time that would make NASA proud. It begins, he says, two hours, 15 minutes before kickoff when he visits the production trailer. A hundred minutes before game time, he meets with security for an update and then, 10 minutes later, with TV producers and each team’s PR reps to confirm the final team rosters. He and his back judge then get together with, “the orange sleeves and the green hat.” Those are two sideline production personnel with whom he coordinates commercials and video reviews, respectively. Like him, their attire is color-coded to be easily found among the masses. Then it’s time to get out on the field, meet with the coaches and get ready to play.
It’s an almost overwhelming job for any official to referee in the NFL, no matter how good he is. So nobody can waltz in from a college career directly to the referee position. They need time to adapt. “It would be remarkable to take less than two years,” to work into the crew chief job, says Pereira. Markbreit did it in one and Ed Hochuli did it in two. It took McAulay three years, even though everyone seemed to know he was headed for the job. Part of the transition is learning the ropes in the NFL, but there’s also a great deal of grooming. So proto-referees from the college ranks work another position, which is sometimes problematic.
“I went in as a side judge — and not a real strong side judge — right off the bat,” recalls McAulay. He looks back on his first season as one of many ups and downs, “… but I think they found out real early on that I was very coachable. … The second year, I was better and then I worked a conference final the third year. Then they made me a referee.”
While NFL Europe was still in operation, the NFL would select a halfdozen or so people to be referees in that league every spring, each working about half the weeks of its schedule. McAulay was one of them for two years. The objective was to teach them the position in a realistic setting under the watch of mentors. Typically, a referee would go to Europe on a Friday and work the game on Saturday night. He would then work with a mentor through the next week, in Europe, reviewing what happened and developing strategies to improve. Cashion and Markbreit spent a lot of time working over there in that role. The candidate would work another game the following Saturday before heading home, a cycle that would be repeated several times. It was immersion refereeing.
With the demise of NFL Europe after its 2007 season, developing new referees is more of a challenge.
“We still have a stockpile of officials that we know who worked over there. We’re still drawing from those guys,” Pereira says. “But it is much more difficult now to make the decision on who’s going to be a new referee than it was before. With NFL Europe, at the end of the season, I could tell you who my next referee was. I can’t tell you that now.”
Even without NFL Europe, NFL officials and potential white hats still receive training from Markbreit and Cashion. They spend time talking to the referees pretty much on a weekly basis and watching video of them.
“Jerry and I have talked every week since I became a referee,” says McAulay. “We go over issues I’ve had in my game. He really is an incredible trainer, coach — father figure. Red has been a great help, too, but they go at it from different directions.” Cheffers says that Markbreit is “blue collar,” focusing on Xs and Os, while Cashion talks about “Showtime”— how you run the game.
“There’s really no such thing as a natural in this business,” says McAulay. “I believe I started with some basic level of talent and then learned what worked for me,” with their and others’ help. He says that Cashion and Markbreit are full of useful ideas and he’s applied the ones that suit his personality.
What happens if a prospective referee who was a white hat in college washes out at the other position when he comes into the league? Pereira says it happens. One way out is to bring in another official already working in the league who has shown potential to referee but may not have been in the original plan. One such person is Cheffers.
Cheffers was exposed to officiating at an early age because his dad worked in the Pac-10. He started working high school games out of college and progressed in the Southern California junior college leagues and Divisions II and III, where he worked as a crew chief. He got into the Pac-10 as a head linesman in 1995 but worked only a partial schedule there for the next four years, filling out his calendar by refereeing in the lower divisions. Cheffers says that it’s a long process to build a full schedule in the Pac-10 because of the good officials available. Despite limited D-I exposure, good things began to happen to him in 1999.
He was invited to NFL Europe that spring as a side judge, while still working in college. Pereira told Cheffers they knew he could work the line but wanted to see how he handled a deep position. Then, Jim Blackwood, a person Cheffers barely knew but Pereira knew well, offered him a half-schedule in the Western Athletic Conference to go with his Pac-10 dates. And the Pac-10 put him to work as a side judge, too. “Without that full season of Division I in 1999,” Cheffers says, “the NFL would not have let me in.” After that season, the NFL took him on as a side judge.
Cheffers says he interviewed with Seeman, who asked him what he ultimately wanted to do in the league. Against the logic of the situation, “I told him I thought I was best suited as a referee. Mike (Pereira) was sitting in the room and heard that and Jerry (Seeman) just smiled,” he remembers.
He went to work on a crew with referee Larry Nemmers, and Cheffers says it later became clear he was the heir-apparent. “He helped me a lot,” says Cheffers. That’s another way the NFL grooms prospective referees — pairing them with great veterans. Cheffers spent five years working in NFL Europe as a referee before he made it to crew chief in the NFL. Nemmers is now his replay official.
It used to be that you knew you’d made it as a NASA astronaut when you got fitted for a spacesuit; it meant you would get a flight. In the NFL, you’ve hit it big when Markbreit invites you to his house in Illinois to talk refereeing. Between the time Cheffers was selected in April 2008 and his first game, Markbreit guesses he spent 100 hours working with him.
The initial visit in Markbreit’s living room lasted about four hours. The two talked about everything from how to be a leader to keeping your hair cut. “Jerry availed himself to me anytime, day or night,” Cheffers said.
At age 48, some 30 years after he first used a whistle and nine after Cheffers joined the league, he worked his first game as an NFL referee.
Even though some referees are chosen from within the NFL ranks with little D-I referee experience like Cheffers, with more regularity, those fresh faces are already crew chiefs.
“I’ve changed over the years. And I think because I’ve changed, the league’s changed,” Pereira says. “We always used to look for a referee from within, a guy that was a successful line judge or side judge or whatever. A guy like Ed Hochuli never refereed in college, but they could see early on that he had some traits so they made him a referee. Same with Mike Carey, he didn’t do any (college) refereeing before he started refereeing in the NFL. I now like to identify the guys who are successful as a referee in college. They have gone through a lot of nuances of the position, so they don’t have to learn where you have to look and the type of calls you have to make. … If you look at our stockpile of future referees, they are guys who have refereed in college.”
But doesn’t that involve more risk without the free trial Europe offered? What if that person doesn’t pan out? First, Pereira makes a point of having his scouts get right into the locker room and crew meetings with college candidates, watching the way they handle assignments and relate to their crews. Also, the background checks the NFL now performs make it unlikely anyone will be a nefarious dud, once selected. The third thing that helps is the preponderance of NFL officials, like McAulay, who are now coordinators in college football.
McAulay does that job in the Big East and applies the same standards among his charges that he adheres to in the NFL. Other than the level, the similarities between the pros and a big college conference are strong. Pereira can decide that if they’re good enough for McAulay to recommend, they’re good enough to take a look at.
The best way to build competence into any job is to have no shortage of qualified candidates. That is true of the NFL. Pereira has more than 100 of the world’s best officials in his stable who could be the next great white hat. And he has applications from hundreds of qualified college officials. In an earlier time, it might have been hard to get out and get a read on all of them but the network of NFL guys working as coordinators now makes that job doable. If there’s a good one out there, somebody Pereira trusts has seen that official.
And a few years from now, that official may be on his (or her) way to wearing the white hat in the NFL.
Tim Sloan, Bettendorf, Iowa, officiates high school basketball, football and volleyball.
Sidbar:
What It Takes
Meet the 17 men who wear the white hat in the NFL, listed with the year they entered the league and their first as an NFL white hat. Some had a lot of experience at the referee position before becoming an NFL crew chief and others had little. All share their opinions on the most important skill for an NFL referee/crew chief.
WALT ANDERSON, 1996
NFL White Hat: 2003
White Hat Experience: High school; Division IAA: one game.
Key Skill: Leadership. How the referee manages the crew and prepares it will determine success. Officials look to the referee to guide and direct them in all aspects of officiating and working together as a team. Those who do that effectively usually generate the most successful results for their crew and each individual.
JEROME BOGER, 2004
NFL White Hat: 2006
White Hat Experience: High school, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Conference USA, AFL, NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Be a good listener. By listening to your crewmembers, you become familiar with each member. That enables you to get to know each member and identify their skills. It also gives you an opportunity to understand what is important to that member. You can then utilize their individual skills to make the crew successful.
DON CAREY, 1995
NFL White Hat: 2009
White Hat Experience: High school and small college; Big West: one year; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership is critical because a referee’s prime responsibility is to assure a crew works at the highest level of performance and efficiency. Leadership encompasses a number of skills: preparation, communication, teaching, flexibility, understanding, resourcefulness, empathy, nurturing, etc.
MIKE CAREY, 1990
NFL White Hat: 1995
White Hat Experience: High school.
Key Skill: The ability to recognize individuals’ strengths/weaknesses, praise and polish the strengths and help develop needed skills. Instill desire and confidence to perform at our very best.
CARL CHEFFERS, 2000
NFL White Hat: 2008
White Hat Experience: High school; junior college; NCAA Division III; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership. That trait encompasses a lot of qualities that I want to have as a crew chief: good manager (getting the crew prepared and performing at our peak); striving for excellence (leading by example); good communication (with coaches, supervisors, peers); decision maker (informed and willing to decide).
WALT COLEMAN, 1989
NFL White Hat: 1995
White Hat Experience: Junior high.
Key Skill: People skills. How you handle yourself and your communication with crew, coaches, media, fans, local community and management are all extremely important to success.
TONY CORRENTE, 1995
NFL White Hat: 1998
White Hat Experience: Junior college/small college; Big West: six years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Understanding the needs that take place at a game. The two coaches, television and the NFL are turning control over to us. It’s about more than making the calls. It’s about crew cooperation and knowing the needs of the TV producers and others. … A referee needs management skills and communication skills to understand the needs of everyone involved.
SCOTT GREEN, 1991
NFL White Hat: Midseason in 2004
White Hat Experience: Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference: four years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Understanding your crewmates, gaining their trust and confidence and then getting everyone to realize that we all benefit individually, if the crew is working well together.
ED HOCHULI, 1990
NFL White Hat: 1992
White Hat Experience: None.
Key Skill: Leadership. Ninety percent of being a good referee has nothing to do with the calls you make. It’s the leadership of the crew that matters most, both on and off the field. That includes teaching, motivating, counseling, supporting, praising and control.
BILL LEAVY, 1995
NFL White Hat: 2001
White Hat Experience: Big West: six years.
Key Skill: Leadership, to make the guys on your crew better individually and as a group. Bring together the rules, mechanics and philosophies that the NFL has developed to assist your crew in becoming successful.
TERRY MCAULAY, 1998
NFL White Hat: 2001
White Hat Experience: High school; Old Dominion Athletic Conference: four years; ACC: four years.
Key Skill: It’s a combination of learned behaviors that are brought to bear on creating a successful team. Those include: leadership, communication, organization, etc. The most successful referees are able to get the best out of each official and create an environment whereby the crew as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
PETE MORELLI, 1997
NFL White Hat: 2003
White Hat Experience: High school; junior college; Division II: one year; WAC: one year; Big West: 1994-95.
Key Skill: Leadership, but in actuality the qualities of leadership are the skills needed to be a successful referee. They include: commitment, communication, listen to learn, charisma, problem solving, integrity, passion, competence, courage to do what’s right.
JOHN PARRY, 2000
NFL White Hat: 2007
White Hat Experience: AFL: one game; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: I have worked hard at strong and open communication skills that speak from the heart when dealing with my crew, coaches, players and game personnel as well as being the facilitator to arm my crew for success in every aspect of the game, paying attention to the execution of all details in reference to game administration.
AL RIVERON, 2004
NFL White Hat: 2008
White Hat Experience: High school; Southern Independent Collegiate Officials Association: two years; Big East: two years; Conference USA: four years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: You must first learn the individual make-up of your crew. Learn what makes each person tick under different and sometimes difficult situations. That helps you to find the best way to communicate and get the most out of each one and allows them to perform to the best of their abilities as individuals but most importantly as a unit.
GENE STERATORE, 2003
NFL White Hat: 2006
White Hat Experience: Big East: two years; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Leadership. Letting the crew know you are willing to make the final decision when appropriate, but you are not free from mistakes. Projecting strength without being overbearing. I look at my crew as a family, and I am the head of the household. You must know each member of the crew and what type of personality he has. In order to have a close-knit family, you must be open, trustworthy and caring.
JEFF TRIPLETTE, 1996
NFL White Hat: 1999
White Hat Experience: Southern Conference; NFL Europe.
Key Skill: Building a cohesive officiating crew focused on concentration, communication, respect and having fun. Getting every member of the crew to buy into that concept ensures the crew (and each official on it) can meet any challenge and be successful.
RON WINTER, 1995
NFL White Hat: 1998
White Hat Experience: Division III: four years; Big Ten: eight years.
Key Skill: Show confidence in your crew. All must believe there is nothing we can’t handle as a group.