What do a tax fraud investigator, a physical therapist and a health insurance salesman have in common? They are all refereeing this weekend’s Super Bowl.
It is a little-known quirk of the NFL that the multibillion-dollar-grossing sports behemoth employs part-time officials to oversee even its biggest games.
Sunday’s NFL flagship spectacle is to be officiated by Shawn Smith, who from Monday to Friday works as a manager at the Detroit branch of a medical insurance firm.
Photo: AFP
“They’ve always been part-time,” said Ben Austro, founder of Football Zebras, a Web site that tracks NFL officials and their decisions. “You’ll see lawyers, teachers, educators ... entrepreneurs who have the ability to take a little bit of time off work.”
The league has even employed pilots, air traffic controllers and a rocket scientist.
However, NFL officials are the elite of the elite — painstakingly scouted from college football by a vast network of talent-spotters, trained and vetted, and expected to spend 40 to 50 hours a week preparing for their football duties during the season, Austro said.
“It’s not: ‘Oh, we show up in the city the night before, have a great steak dinner and then just roll out onto the field for three hours,’” he said.
Inevitably, NFL officials come in for criticism at times — and their part-time status can be an easy line of attack.
“The refs are the worst... These guys are lawyers. They want to be on TV, too,” Los Angeles Rams star receiver Puka Nacua said in December last year. “You don’t think he’s texting his friends in the group chat like: ‘Yo, you just saw me on Sunday Night Football?’”
Nacua’s diatribe, made on an Internet livestream, earned him a US$25,000 fine.
Other players have called for referees’ contracts to be upgraded with a more positive tone.
“I do think that it would probably help to have all of them full-time,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said in 2023.
“They’ve got a tough job to do, to make calls in real time, and they’re as scrutinized as the quarterbacks and kickers are,” he told The Pat McAfee Show.
Not everyone believes that change is needed.
The referees’ union does not disclose financial terms of contract negotiations, but top NFL officials are believed to earn more than US$200,000 per year.
As the NFL’s off-season is vastly longer than its 18-week regular season, officials benefit from a “dark period” to recharge from January until May, in which they cannot be contacted by the league.
Once the regular season ends, officials who have excelled are rewarded with coveted games in the playoffs.
The process is merit-based, but secretive, with NFL’s head of officiating Ramon George believed to have the final say on who gets the Super Bowl.
This year’s choice, Smith, has spent eight years as referee — the top-ranking position of the on-field officials — and was previously in the more junior role of umpire.
“He’s got good control of the game. It instills confidence,” Austro said.
He would doubtless hope to continue a post-season in which refereeing decisions have largely been uncontroversial — with one major exception.
The Buffalo Bills have continued to complain that Josh Allen’s overtime pass against the Denver Broncos should not have been declared an interception, a decision that led to their elimination from the playoffs.
“It was absolutely an interception ... it seemed pretty obvious to us,” Austro said. “The number of times that they get these things correct is just astonishing to me.”
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