Commentary by Ben Austro

Each year teams start with a clean slate and begin their quest to make it to the playoffs and hopefully get to the Super Bowl. Every team is leveled at 0-0, so theoretically anyone can make it to the Big Game.

Officials start that quest as well, to earn that playoff assignment and possibly earn a Super Bowl. For years, Football Zebras has outlined the criteria to earn a Super Bowl. This was a major point of contention heading into Super Bowl XLVII — the same year that the NFL locked out its officials during a contract stalemate and the league was thoroughly embarrassed on the national stage by substandard replacement officials.

I say the league was embarrassed, but the replacement officials should not as they did the job to the best of their abilities. Their lack of experience was on clear display, but that is the fault of those who put them there.

A few months later, we had exclusive reporting that grades were manipulated and the Super Bowl officials were determined weeks before the end of the season. The fallout lead to some reforms in the grading system, which is why anonymous sources were contacting us in frustration in the first place.

We attempted to confirm the postseason criteria after that season, but the league declined to comment each year until we stopped asking. But it has largely remained as it was: referees needed a game in a prior postseason at the referee position, and the rest of the crew needed to have a conference championship game, or a 3-of-5 bypass (three postseason games in five seasons). All officials, including referees, needed 5 years of NFL experience.

Where did that number 5 come from? As we discussed on the 1st & 25 podcast, it has been established that officials are not quite up to speed in the NFL until that fifth season. This had been established by the venerable head of officiating and Hall of Famer Art McNally. Of course they are competent at their jobs by and large during that time, but it’s a long probationary period for good reason.

The Super Bowl qualifications did have some wiggle room, although it was not apparent which were in the collective bargaining agreement. As far as the Super Bowl is concerned, the CBA only prohibits Super Bowl assignments in consecutive years and an official apparently cannot be passed over two seasons in a row if they are the top qualified official at that position both seasons.

This year, Super Bowl assignments are made by Ramon George, who left the field in the previous offseason to become the vice president of officiating. His selections raised several eyebrows because some of those presumably baked-in requirements were not applied.

We asked the league and the officiating union for comment, but both declined.

Specifically, two officials in their third NFL season — umpire Mike Morton and down judge Max Causey — were assigned to the big game. The 5-year criteria apparently isn’t in the CBA, but it breaks the “McNally Commandment.” It further caught many off guard because it wasn’t one but two officials doing so. During the playoffs, two sources said that criteria was removed by George from the evaluation documentation at the beginning of the season. So, technically the McNally Commandment was not broken, rather it was repealed long before postseason.

Because of their early entrance to the big stage, they did not work many playoff games; in fact, Morton’s second postseason game as an NFL official came a week after he was assigned to the Super Bowl.

That is a little unsettling, much like it is when a coach opts to go for a winning two-point conversion at the end of regulation instead of going for the tie. The coach is called “gutsy” to have made that play call — if he’s successful.

As much as it may feel out of place for George’s assignments to a game of this magnitude, there’s no reason to think that Morton and Causey will be anything less than successful. They are not replacement officials. We could also point out that the rest of the crew has the most first-time Super Bowl officials since that controversial assignments in XLVII. And how did that game go? Our recap said that referee Jerome Boger and the crew, “held together quite a great game despite several obstacles: an extra-long halftime, a half-hour delay [due to an electrical blackout] that had to be draining, and scrappiness from both sides of the ball.”

In the end, an official’s talent will always win out. You can’t hide a bad official, nor can you hide a good one.

This year is not the first time a 3rd-year official was in the Super Bowl

Historical perspective by Mark Schultz

This isn’t the first time officials with three years of experience got a Super Bowl, although it is very rare. In a couple of cases, it was necessity

AFL officials get the big game

Before the AFL-NFL merger, both leagues supplied officials for the Super Bowl. AFL brass did not go by the seniority system in making the assignments. Granted, the AFL had only been in existence for six years when the Super Bowl was invented, so there weren’t 20-year grizzled veterans. Only two AFL officials had prior experience in the NFL. But, the AFL didn’t automatically assign six-year vets to the Super Bowl.

For Super Bowl II, the AFL assigned third-year referee Jack Vest to oversee the big game. Vest got the game over AFL veteran referees John McDonough, Ben Dreith, and Walt Fitzgerald. The game went off without a hitch and Vest did a good job.

In Super Bowl III, the AFL assigned line judge Cal Lepore to the game. Lepore was a three year veteran when he got the game. Considering what happened, Lepore may have wanted to stay home. Lepore (number 32), had to break up a fracas between the Jets Johnny Sample and the Colts Tom Matte. His metal whistle was in his mouth during the scrap and and Matte’s facemask hit that whistle and knocked out four of Lepore’s teeth. Lepore finished the game and saw history as the Jets upset the Colts.

1980 a very good year for line judges

During the 1980 season, Ron Botchan was a rookie line judge. He was an umpire in college, but the NFL hired him as a line judge. Botchan had never worked as a line judge. The idea was for him to work at the line judge and become an umpire in the future.

In the book The Third Team, Botchan recalled that during the season he was getting good grades. At the end of the season, Art McNally told Botchan he was the top-ranked line judge in the entire NFL – in his first year, having never before worked the position. McNally didn’t assign Botchan to the Super Bowl, but gave him a divisional playoff game. Botchan said that he was met with resentment at a pre-playoff mini-clinic, with one official telling him, “Rookie, you don’t belong here.” Botchan worked the Raiders-Browns “Red Right 88” game. Next season, he moved to umpire, replacing Lou Palazzi who retired. Botchan then went on to work five Super Bowls as an umpire.

But, Botchan wasn’t the only highly-accomplished line judge in 1980.

In 1978, the NFL hired Tom Dooley as a line judge. After his third season, Art McNally assigned Dooley (third from the right in the above photo) to Super Bowl XV. During the 1970s and 1980s, Bob Beeks and Jack Fette worked five Super Bowls apiece. It was very hard for a line judge to break through the Beeks/Fette Super Bowl wall. And Dooley got the Super Bowl in his third season.

In 1981, Dooley was made a referee, who replaced Cal Lepore (who became a referee in the 1970s) who retired.

So, while some people furrowed their eyebrows when this year’s Super Bowl crew was announced, Morton and Causey are not the first officials with three years of experience to call the big game. And those officials who worked the Super Bowl decades before did just fine. I expect the same this season.