A Tough Job Made Harder: Football Officials in an Unforgiving World

By Richard Lister

With pressure to perform free from error in America’s most popular sport—an impossibility—the work done by football officials has become more difficult than ever. A Tough Job Made Harder explores how this has happened and looks at the challenges that lie ahead for the game and its officials.

Cultural imperatives grounded in team allegiance have increased the stresses on football’s judges to invariably “get it right.” Officials offer a path of low resistance for those channeling ire over a game’s untoward outcome. Fans’, coaches’, and players’ investment in their teams’ success often leads to anger toward the officials, adding strain to those overseeing and judging the games. Even physical assault on officials is not unheard of in today’s football.

The increased demand for perfection has invited technology into officiating. Paradoxically, the tools designed to cure mistakes have led to unintended consequences that have made the job even more daunting. Fans expect officials’ eyesight to match the slow-motion, high-definition images television affords.

And with increasing stress on player safety, the burden to make the game safer has been added to those already borne by the profession.

Underappreciated for their skill and dedication, the dynamics impacting the work and perceptions of it are leading to high attrition. This trend is troubling for the game’s future.

In A Tough Job Made Harder, Richard Lister, having consulted such preeminent officiating voices as Mike Pereira, Jerry Markbreit, Bill Carollo, Dean Blandino, and Terry McAulay, looks at the demands on football officials as well as what makes the work so rewarding to those who embark on it. Despite the proclivity for fans to criticize and lay blame on officiating, those who undertake it do so with immense pride and professionalism.

In addition to A Tough Job Made Harder, Lister has written The Third Team, NFL Officials: Their Lives, Their Stories, the only third-person perspective on NFL game officials. He also collaborated with renowned NFL offensive line coach Howard Mudd to write The View From the O-Line, an oral history of Mudd’s career intertwined with those of twenty NFL offensive linemen whose career arcs led them to play football’s most essential and underappreciated position.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NYLA
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781641972154

Book preview

Preface

While writing The Third Team ten years ago, I discovered the unswerving passion National Football League officials bring to their work. For them, the job is not simply an engaging avocation. It is a calling. The zeal that impels them sets its hook early in their careers, often when they officiate their first Pop Warner or peewee game.

Football officials at every level feel the same pull. For most whom I met, the desire to ascend to the next level inspired them to excel. Many have nurtured the hope to one day be called to the NFL.

I have undertaken this second book with an eye toward learning how changes in officiating over the past decade have affected those who perform it. My exploration revealed a startling finding. The devotion to officiating, at least its breadth, seems to be on the wane.

Some seven in ten who embark on officiating leave it behind within five years. This surprising fact reinforces my suspicion that changes have indeed permeated officiating over the past ten years. What has caused so many to discard what others embrace with fervor?

Among the obvious reasons is disrespect from fans and coaches, which at times has degenerated to violence. The instances in which officials across all sports are subjected to assault have become too frequent. Even short of bodily attack, verbal abuse is consequential. A point arrives for many where they decide the joy in being part of the game isn’t worth the grief that fans, coaches, and players heap on them. Which leads to the question: What is causing the anger?

Some answers are obvious. Most easily understood is the ire dispensed by players and coaches. Competitive fuel drives emotion, and livelihoods depend on results. Those factors alone mean that anger is readily prodded by a perceived officiating slight.

At the youth and high school levels, parents are invested in their children’s success. But from there, things become more perplexing.

The tribal connection to one’s alma mater or adopted college team can evoke more than occasional irrationality. And the NFL? The same sort of attachment to a team can cause varying levels of unraveling when things don’t go well. People much smarter than I will have to explain the forces that fierce team partisanship unleashes.

Then, of course, there’s the money wagered week over week. Gambling losses are obvious irritants. That includes the legions engaged in fantasy football.

Devotion has always given followers a psychological stake in the games’ outcomes. The cycle starts with ever-increasing fan engagement. Money follows. Benefactors demand results. More fans engage, and more money pours in. Pressure grows for players, coaches, and yes, officials.

So, God forbid that an official’s call deflects the game’s arc.

Whether officials have made the right or wrong call, on-field law enforcement is an easy target. A target that has become more inviting thanks to technology. Phenomena that existed only on developmental drawing boards lists in decades past are now commonplace. The demand for victory unimpeded by officiating foible has brought us technology in the service of eliminating errors. 

The cameras that bring football into homes throughout the world provide a microscopic postmortem into every minute movement that comprises a play warranting a second look. Or a third, fourth, fifth. Well, you get the idea.

Replay review is entrenched in the officiating bailiwick. Irony lies in these modern instruments intended to reinforce officials’ performance but that also scatter seeds for disparagement.

Today’s high-def cameras, with the capability to produce crisp images at the slowest of replay speeds, cause the viewer to wonder how it was possible the person in the striped shirt could possibly have not seen the action the same way. It is difficult to grasp that no human eye can possibly perceive the images television viewers see. But that doesn’t stop those so inclined to immediately dispatch word of an officiating mistake to the cyber universe.

Social media allows anyone who wants a bullhorn and a podium to say things, no matter how outlandish, that shape commentary. It is a light-speed means by which to spread recrimination.

And the emphasis on winning in the National Football League and Division I college football filters downward. The pressure can be found in high school games. Its cause is the expectation that officiating schoolboys’ games will be pristine, just as with their higher profile counterparts.

It is small wonder, then, that many turn away from a rewarding avocation in disillusionment. With the numbers diminishing and the demographics skewing toward an older average age, problems for football lurk on the horizon.

But the good news is that those who allow officiating’s lure to entice them are as dedicated and driven as ever. They recognize their essence to the game.

I have called on prominent officiating voices to consider what has changed in officiating, what is good, what is wrong, and what should be reshaped. Perhaps in the end, readers will conclude that those who officiate at the game’s highest levels excel at a job that is far more difficult than the average fan appreciates.

Not only that, those undertaking to read the following pages will find that the ones wearing the striped shirt are wholly dedicated to doing the work with fidelity to fairness and the players’ safety.

And for those wanting to embark on making officiating their avocation or maybe even a career, they might find the experiences of the book’s contributors to be beacons to guide them toward an endeavor so many have come to embrace.

For even with its many challenges, those who invest their time and talent in officiating football find joy and passion that those in stadium seats and in front of televisions cannot start to comprehend.

Richard Lister

May 2021

1

The Tech-Perfection Chimera

At a time, perhaps, in the not-too-distant future.

The Homers have been threatening, but they are down to their last chance. It’s fourth and goal. They have the ball one yard from the end zone. Inside a minute remains in the fourth quarter. Close game. The Homers trail by five against the Reviled Guests.

Running back Uncommon Force takes the ball from the quarterback, accelerating with singular purpose. Force encounters a human hill impeding his travel. He sees no opening to the endzone. He launches to leap over the pile. He comes to rest atop, his forward motion impeded. At the apex he thrusts the ball toward the goal line’s front edge, hoping the nose of the ball will cross.

An embedded sensor will signal if as little as a micron of leather pierces the plane, which is monitored by lasers. Elements in the ball carrier’s uniform detect when any body part other than his hand or foot contacts the ground or if his forward progress has stopped.

Every effort has been made to erase human error from judging the game.

The master technical overseer in the press box watches the stadium’s dashboard. The Reviled Guests front defensive wall has stopped Force’s forward progress, preventing him from getting the ball to the goal. The Officiating Wizard on High posts the result on the mega jumbotron, announcing to paying fans and the world that the Reviled Guests have held and will take over on downs.

The crowd erupts into a berserk paroxysm. Six inebriated patrons who arrived at the stadium with nothing covering their torsos but greasepaint in the Homers’ team colors launch beer bottles at the booth housing the officiating dashboard. Others extend middle fingers in the same direction. The crowd grouses that the technology was unquestionably flawed. Anyone could plainly see that the ball crossed the plane.

The conspiracy brokers launch into action. Twitter and every other social media forum conflagrate. Surely, The League has meddled with the system. The visitors are from such a large market, it is in The League’s financial interest that they win.

Homers’ fans feel cheated. Everyone who roots for them will have their day spoiled for at least a couple hours. For others, the weight will be heavier. They lapse into temporary depression. Many lose much of the multi-million dollars wagered on the game. The contest has left the Homer’s fandom in a funk or worse.

And God forbid having to endure those who own Uncommon Force in their fantasy leagues.

Elsewhere, the Reviled Guests’ partisans gloat that the state-of-the-art technology has saved football. They hail it as the greatest development in the game since instant replay review. That is, at least, until their team goes on to lose a game later in the season on a tight call.

This futurist fantasy likely strikes you as a bit much. If it does, reflect on how much technology has permeated football officiating in the past thirty years. The changes have evolved from the demand that the game be judged mistake free. The insistence has been driven by the fans’ proclivity to buy tickets or tune in to the game for more than the mere return of simple entertainment. They invest their hearts.

That commitment drives the financial juggernaut that the National Football League and major college football have become. Enlarging business rewards coupled with the fans’ fervor creates an ever growing call that officiating be error free. This imperative has led the game’s authorities to enlist technology into the cause of officiating perfection. But state-of-the art instruments will not solve all problems. Despite remarkable advances, modern tools have not achieved an officiating panacea. Nor will they ever.

Let’s first agree that we will always need living, breathing officials on the field. While every competitive endeavor ignites emotion, football does so with particular intensity. Imbued with passion and physical combat, the game will always require human beings on the field to modulate it. Without someone to maintain control amid aggression, the game would degenerate to anarchy. Replacing the referee with an automaton would never work. But there is more to the game’s essence that demands the human element.

Judgment.

The game’s most electrifying action calls for subjectivity rather than sharp-edged codified directives. Over the past fifty years, the forward pass has raised football to the entertainment bonanza it has become. It is the play that most often electrifies the viewers. It has made the quarterback the single most valuable member of the team. With the pass having singular importance, applying a rule allowing the play to be successfully completed against a reasonable chance to defend represents one of officiating’s biggest tests.

The challenge to balance a fair opportunity to catch the ball against a fair chance to thwart it has defied precisely defining pass interference. The problem calls to mind the adage coined by Justice Potter Stewart when the Supreme Court considered what constitutes pornography. He allowed that he could not define it, but, I know it when I see it.

Rule 8, Section 5, Article 1 of the Official Playing Rules of the National Football League likewise defies precision. It says pass interference is any act that significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball. What exactly does significantly hinder mean?

It means what the official judging the call says it does.

If pass receivers could run at will without defenders allowed to lay hands on them, defensive backs might as well remain on the bench. Today’s receivers are too good for even the best defensive backs to cover man-to-man without being allowed something in their tool bag. Part of that allowance is permission to use their hands and arms while competing for the thrown ball. It is from this interaction, known as hand checking, or more aptly, hand fighting, that pass interference often devolves. Action that to ten officials might look to be significant restraint might be incidental or harmless contact to ten others. Significant hinderance is in the beholder’s eye.

Rule 8 lists seven acts constituting pass interference by the offense or defense. But even those offenses must significantly hinder the opportunity to catch the ball before the action becomes interference. In most instances the foul is obvious. But in close plays, the decision to assess a penalty or not rests in discretion. Reasonable minds can differ. But that will not satisfy the aggrieved team and its followers, who will contend that the officials making the call are irredeemable imbeciles.

Officiating is as much an art as a science. The corollary is that technology can never replace officials. The game requires decisions that are purely human. There are calls that can’t be made with artificial intelligence or by someone standing by to give a second opinion. The 2018 NFL playoffs ignited a debate that would take only one season to reinforce the point.

On January 20, 2019 hell’s walls crumbled in New Orleans. A misjudgment made at a most inopportune moment and in the glare of the brightest spotlight led to cries that there had to be a way to correct human decision making.

With the score tied and under two minutes remaining in the 2018 season’s National Football Conference Championship in New Orleans, the Saints faced third down and ten yards to gain from the Rams’ fifteen-yard line. Drew Brees released a pass toward the Saints sideline at the Los Angeles Rams’ five-yard line toward teammate Tommylee Lewis. As the ball approached Lewis, Rams defensive back Nickell Robey-Coleman drove headlong into Lewis, making helmet-to-helmet contact with the receiver.

But instead of a flag for pass interference and contact to the head, the play ended with the call of an incomplete pass. Had a penalty been administered with its automatic first down, the Saints would have bled the clock before attempting a game-winning field goal. But forced to kick with time remaining, the three points weren’t enough to hold off the Rams, who tied the game at the end of regulation play. Winning in overtime, Los Angeles went to the Super Bowl. New Orleans went berserk.

Replayed video made it plain that Robey-Coleman intended to prevent Lewis from making the catch rather than making a play for the ball, an act that works toward averting a defensive pass interference call. His postgame confession to as much was another lit matched tossed into the gas can.

The roiling brought about an ill-conceived effort to superimpose technology’s twenty-first century marvels onto the officials’ judgment. The league voted to permit replay review for pass interference calls. The fix did not go well.

In cruel irony, the Saints found the square-peg-round-hole solution for the injustice they suffered a year earlier wholly ineffective to save them from another intractably painful loss. In their 2019 NFC Wildcard overtime loss to Minnesota, Vikings tight end Kyle Rudolph extended his right arm into Saints defensive back PJ Williams, creating separation that allowed the game-winning catch. The question was whether the move was illegal or if it was mere incidental hand contact.

In the Saints’ world, Rudolph’s action was an impermissible shove amounting to offensive pass interference. The previous season’s Robey-Coleman play that led to pass interference replay review in 2019 did nothing for the Saints. The Rudolph catch was just the type of play the new replay protocol was supposed to cure. But the powers presiding over review did not deem the Vikings’ touchdown worthy of in-depth analysis. They let the play stand, seemingly without much scrutiny after the fact. The remedy that Saints fans screamed for was to no avail a year later.

If ever there was an instance replay review would result in consensus among those not Rams partisans, it would be the Robey-Coleman play. What the action looked like at game speed from the angle where it was called isn’t the same as seeing it from multiple angles slowed to dissect in a manner impossible for human eyesight. But from a ninety-degree angle, viewed in slow motion, it was plain to see that Robey-Coleman interfered. His post-facto admission cemented the discussion. The uproar led to monumental rule change that ended with a thud.

Few pass interference challenges made in the 2019 season swayed the NFL replay command center in New York. Questionable calls withstood review. No-calls for egregious-looking fouls went undisturbed. Asking those in the command center to second guess the on-field judgment struck at the heart of the problem. Judgment is subjective.

There is no more a simple formula for someone in New York to decide if the defender substantially restricted the receiver than there is for the official at the scene. With muddled results from reviewing pass interference throughout the 2019 season, the league put the one-year experiment to an unceremonious end.

Thus endeth the lesson. Technology and judgment do not comfortably coexist. Yet, replay rules allowing judgment to be reconsidered remain on the books. Replay review’s original purpose was to remedy obvious objective errors. Did two feet come down inbounds? Did the ball hit the ground? Did the ball cross the goal line? Those are questions with concrete answers that replay review can settle. Nonetheless, subjective calls remain embedded in review.

For example, issues surrounding whether the receiver caught the ball before fumbling or whether the pass was simply incomplete remain in the protocol. Critics contend that reviewing an official’s judgment is often mere second guessing. A high-speed camera can slow the action down enough to make anything look like a catch followed by a fumble. In real time, the purported possession might have covered less time than an eye’s blinking.

Who should make the decision? Someone applying their experience and skill observing in real time, or someone removed from the field, painstakingly dissecting the play frame by frame at a monitor? All this in an effort to apply rules that, ironically, replay has in some instances rendered amorphous. What, after all, is a catch? Before replay, most of us had a pretty good idea. But review has created a pinhead ballet to refine and redefine it.

Even using replay in its well-intentioned application to resolve objective errors won’t necessarily eliminate all dissent. Assuming human imperfection could be wiped from officiating, would it assuage the partisan whose team’s ox has been gored by a close call? Given the reluctance of many who would refuse to accede even that water is wet, quiet acceptance will not be universal. Which reveals an enduring truth.

The decisionmaker is sometimes reviled, oft disrespected, and generally underappreciated.

The call can be correct and confirmed one-thousand times by video evidence. But if it hurts the team and its fans, the accuracy will not necessarily foreclose anger. Just ask any Oakland/Las Vegas Raider fan, or Jon Gruden for that matter, about the infamous Tuck Rule play in the 2001 AFC Divisional Playoff game. To this day they bewail the call.

The Raiders and their faithful will forever protest that Tom Brady lost a fumble late in the fourth quarter. But replay review restored possession to the Patriots. By any reasonable reading of the admittedly odd and now-repealed rule then in force, the play resulted in an incomplete pass. New England kept the ball and went on to kick the winning field goal. The wound inflicted on the Raiders and their followers left a permanent scar.

There will always be people who will decline to calmly accept that a given game’s result was correct. That passion is welcome. It is what makes the National Football League and major college football mega-billion-dollar enterprises. The games’ keepers know that those not indifferent to the score and who refuse to take outcomes lightly are essential to their consumer base. The owners crave fans for whom football is no more just a game than it is to players and coaches. Those who reap the financial rewards from hyper-fan engagement love this milieu. Quite a lot, thank you.

And for the most fervent, officials offer a path of exceptionally low resistance for assigning blame. Even for rulings grounded in fact rather than judgment, there will always be those peculiarly virulent toward the officiating.

So, in a sci-fi future where officiating is dominated by tools we haven’t yet perfected or perhaps haven’t imagined, there will remain some who will never be satisfied. Their argument might assert that the technology is inadequate or has been gamed to favor one team