Always under review Sports – Page 1, 16 & 17 / By Sam Farmer / Los
Angeles Times Staff Writer / September 23, 2007
Following NFL referees is a
lesson in the game's details and how the league picks apart its crews'
performances as much as the teams and the fans.
In a darkened meeting room at a
The image of an
Oakland Raiders linebacker is the center of attention. He has just made a tackle,
but it's what he does next that's being scrutinized.
Acceptable
reaction by an excited player? Or taunting?
During a game six
days earlier, this NFL officiating crew considered the reaction acceptable. But
now a supervisor was telling them they got it wrong. It should have been a
15-yard penalty.
So they play the
video over and over again, at least 20 times.
Less than 24 hours
later, they will be confronted by a similarly debatable situation --
Under a new rule this
season, that's an automatic five-yard penalty.
But after a short
conversation, the crew -- was that rebuke still ringing in their ears? -- changes it to a 15-yard taunting call because when the ball
bounced up it grazed a defensive player.
And two days later,
the NFL, with the benefit of replay, will disagree again.
No taunting. Should have been a five-yard penalty. Another
downgrade for one of the league's top crews.
"We drive
ourselves crazy on the littlest of details," says one of the men,
"but it's simply because we expect the best."
This is a world few
people outside the officials themselves ever see. As a general rule, the NFL
does not allow its 120 officials to speak to the media.
But last week, this
Times reporter was granted rare behind-the-scenes access to the officiating
crew working the Atlanta Falcons-Jacksonville Jaguars game -- a group led by
the referee who worked the last Super Bowl, Tony Corrente, a La Mirada High
social studies teacher.
The access included
traveling with Corrente on Saturday and shadowing his crew throughout the
weekend, including immediately before and after the game. Then, as the men
returned home -- one is an office manager for a
The NFL is the only
major sports league in the
But for that, the pressure is intense and the
scrutiny unbelievable.
As a result, no detail is too small to
notice.
It's less than an hour before last Sunday's
game and side judge Dyrol Prioleau is warming up right alongside the
Meanwhile, Corrente, 55, watches the
quarterbacks, noticing that the Jaguars' David Garrard has a longer windup than
The significance?
Garrard's style makes him more susceptible to
getting stripped by a pass rusher raking the ball out of his hand from the
side, which is important for a referee to note. After all, it's his job to peel
through a pile and figure out who has recovered any loose ball.
And, sure enough, in the second quarter,
Garrard fumbles after being hit by
An easy call because
Corrente was ready.
During the week, Corrente works with a total
of about 180 students.
On a typical fall Sunday, his audience is
closer to 15 million -- though if all goes as planned he and his crew will be
seen and heard, but never truly noticed.
If the players get rock star treatment, an
official's weekend excursion might be compared to that of a high-level foreign
diplomat -- only without any potential for a night on the town.
It's Saturday afternoon, about 24 hours
before game time, and no sooner does Corrente step into the lobby of his hotel
when the phone rings at the front desk.
It's NFL Security making sure that he has his
credentials, review material and a dozen footballs set aside specifically for
the kicking game.
These balls, called "K-balls," are
sealed in an overnight delivery box behind the desk. At the game, they will
have their own security -- someone whose only job is to ensure no one tries to
replace one with a ball that has been cooked in a microwave, crunched in a vise
or otherwise worn in to make it perform better.
A short time later, Corrente takes out his
laptop and sets it on a long table inside a hotel meeting room. Soon, game
action is being projected onto a large screen, and for two hours the crew pores
over disputed, questionable or otherwise noteworthy calls from their last game
and others around the league.
"We have to learn from our mistakes and
others' mistakes," Corrente says later. "Because if
we don't learn from them, we won't be around long enough to make them all
ourselves."
Even before this meeting, crew members have
studied tape from their previous game, submitted reports on the calls they
made, and have taken their weekly 50-question test on NFL rules.
The league also has provided its evaluation
of the crew's performance from the week before -- an always brutally honest
assessment that can even include a critique of how athletic and tidy the
officials look in uniform.
"They'll say, 'You're not looking fit,'
" says Corrente, who works out five days a week and is meticulous about
staying trim. "People say TV adds 10 pounds, and
you know what that means. Put it this way: We want to look more like the
defensive backs and running backs than offensive linemen."
Sunday, 10:20 a.m., less than three hours
before kickoff -- About 30 police and private security officers are
waiting as a van carrying Corrente and crew rolls through a special entrance at
Jacksonville Municipal Stadium.
Police use a bomb-sniffing dog to check their
bags, then they are escorted to their locker room.
The room is small, but it has a table with
sandwiches and cookies and a cabinet with all the essentials: sunblock,
aspirin, foot powder, athletic tape, energy bars, bubble gum and Tums.
10:29 a.m. -- Two ball boys
arrive to prepare the K-balls. They have precisely 45 minutes to do so under
the supervision of Brian McGready, the kicking-ball coordinator, a
league-appointed official who lives in
10:32 a.m. -- Still in street
clothes, five members of the crew make their first visit to the field, and the temperature is already starting to climb. By
kickoff, the on-field thermometer will register 108 degrees, the humidity making
it feel even hotter.
That's this week. Next week, who knows? Last
season, Corrente's crew worked a game in
Whatever the weather, an NFL referee walks,
jogs and runs an average of 6.6 miles during a game. For a back judge, it's
7.3.
10:40 a.m. -- Corrente is
escorted to a television production truck along with line judge Ron Blum,
replay assistant Bob Mantooth, and game supervisor Neely Dunn.
This is routine. Corrente talks with Fox
producer Ray Smaltz about some minor procedural changes, Mantooth checks on
communication with the replay booth, and Blum addresses issues about the game
clock.
The league appoints one supervisor to oversee
each game. Dunn, a former game official, will prepare a report on how
Corrente's crew performed, studying calls that were made and ones that weren't.
Later, at NFL headquarters, he and other supervisors will issue their final
grades for the week.
10:55 a.m. -- Umpire Steve
Wilson fills out pregame paperwork and checks charts the Jaguars and Falcons
have submitted that show field-goal and punt formations. If there's anything
out of the ordinary, any unusual alignments, the officials would prefer to see
them first before the game.
11:01 a.m. -- While Corrente
goes through an on-field microphone check, back judge
Don Carey puts the game-clock operator through the paces. He wants to see the
clock tick down from 15 minutes. And then he wants to see, say, 13 seconds
added. And 10 seconds run off. You can never be too careful, Carey says. Once,
in
11:17 a.m. -- Field judge Craig
Wrolstad and first-year side judge Prioleau, the youngest members of Corrente's
crew, check the air pressure on all the game balls. Each ball is inflated to
within a one-pound range, so equipment managers can't sneak in ones that are
bloated or under-inflated to correspond with a quarterback's preference and
hand size.
To ensure the footballs aren't switched
during the game, the officials mark each of them using a rubber stamp -- adding
their own personal touch. Walt Coleman, who's in the dairy business, uses a
cow. Gerald Austin, a retired golf pro, uses a golf flag. Ron Winter uses --
what else? -- a snowflake.
Yet, with all the care, teams still
occasionally try to switch out a ball. It happened once to Corrente's crew and
back judge Careyconfiscated the ball, turned it over
to league security, they sent it to headquarters, and the team was punished.
11:32 a.m. -- Blum and Wrolstad
go to the home locker room to meet with Jaguars Coach Jack Del Rio; head
linesman Johnny McGrath and Prioleau meet with Falcons Coach Bobby Petrino.
They all synchronize their watches to make sure there's no confusion about when
the teams are to take the field.
The officials need to know some minor details
such as the jersey numbers of the captains and who's the "get-back"
coach assigned to keep the sidelines orderly. They would also like to know
whether to watch for any trick plays.
12:10 p.m. -- The crew heads
back out to the field, this time in uniform, to warm up, familiarize themselves
with their surroundings, and to observe players.
12:35 p.m. -- In the replay
booth high above midfield, behind a door with a block-letter sign reading
"Positively No Visitors," Mantooth and video operator Terry Poulos
sit bracketed by high-definition TV screens. They have equipment that allows
them to run footage back frame by frame, and in front of Mantooth is a large
touch-screen monitor that allows him to quickly cycle through angles so, in a
challenge situation, he can get the best picture to Corrente as the referee
ducks under the replay hood to look at an identical HDTV monitor.
12:48 p.m. -- Back in the
officials' locker room, Corrente puts in eyedrops to keep his contact lenses
moist. Although everyone but the referee is allowed to wear sunglasses --
exclusively Reebok sunglasses by league decree -- only Blum chooses to do so.
A few years ago, the officials were told by
an eye specialist that a thrown football can travel five yards in the blink of
an eye.
The lesson? Don't blink.
12:52 p.m. -- Four linemen from
each team have been randomly selected to have their jerseys checked for foreign
substances, such as silicone spray or Vaseline, that
makes them slippery.
In 13 years, Corrente says he has never
caught a player using such things, but it's routine. And it's not unheard of.
Many years ago, Raiders cornerback Lester Hayes was known to transform his
hands -- and wrists, and forearms -- into flypaper by slathering them with
Stickum.
1:02 p.m. -- Corrente gathers
the team captains at midfield and flips the coin.
It's Tuesday, two days after the game, in a
room -- NFL officials call it their "command center" -- on the 15th
floor of the league's
Here, nine supervisors, each of them a former
game official, convene with officials boss Mike Pereira to study every play
from the past two days. Each is assigned one to three games, with each game
taking about 4 1/2 hours to grade.
They are looking for infractions that were
called and others that weren't, later splashing selected clips across a
cinema-sized screen so the entire group can vote on what should have happened.
Corrente's crew is "downgraded" for
three plays: holding that was called, holding that wasn't called, and the
taunting call. All in all, a solid performance.
Dunn has been a supervisor six years and says
he can count on one hand the number of zero-downgrade games he remembers.
The NFL can afford to be so thorough because,
unlike pro baseball, basketball and hockey teams, its teams play -- and its
officials work -- only once a week.
Baseball uses six former umpires as
supervisors and about a dozen "field observers" who attend about half
the games. The NBA has one person who works from a broadcast center, plus an
official observer in each city who attends games and grades each call. Group
supervisors then review the observers' reports on games. The NHL has a manned
control room in
On average, there are 152 plays in an NFL game
and the league has determined the accuracy rate of its officials to be between
96.5% and 97%.
The league also does what it can to avoid the
kind of gambling scandal that recently rocked the NBA.
The NFL prohibits officials from so much as
visiting
Back in
His classroom walls carry only a few hints to
his side profession -- posters from Super Bowl XL (he was an alternate) and
XLI. Above the blackboard hang pennants from various colleges.
"He doesn't brag about it; he's really
down to earth," says Amanda Asti, a senior who assists Corrente in one
class. "Even when he got back from the Super Bowl, the only question he
asked was, 'Did anybody watch?' "
From the
