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Judgment days

Sporting News, The, Nov 9, 1998 by Paul Attner

Inside the NFL's `Officiating Central,' senior director Jerry Seeman looks for Super Bowl performances from his referees and their crews, whose calls are scrutinized, graded and, on occasion, found to be wrong

Jerry Seeman, the NFL's senior director of officiating, wants Super Bowl calls. Big calls, obvious calls, calls that you would make in the most important game of the season. No piddly, ticky-tack stuff, please. And he wants these calls every weekend, no matter the game's status. But on this late-October morning, in a dimly lit room within the bowels of the league offices, he is watching anything but a major league call. It is a heck of a way to start off a Monday.

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On a 7 1/2-by-10-foot screen that fills most of a wall, 49ers receiver Terrell Owens is running a pattern straight into the end zone, right at Colts cornerback Jeff Burris. The two collide, the pass from Steve Young arrives in the picture and Burris intercepts the ball. He breaks out of the end zone and runs 67 yards. But right after the interception, a yellow flag enters the picture. Burris is being called for holding.

Now Colts coach Jim Mora dominates the screen. He is angry. Very angry. He is yelling at the officials, pleading to have the call reversed. He loses his appeal. Minutes later, another Colts interception in the end zone also is nullified by a holding call. The 49ers wind up scoring after each negated interception; they win the game, 34-31, erasing a 21-0 Colts lead. Despite a league policy banning public comment about officiating, a disconsolate Mora spends part of his postgame press conference lambasting the penalties.

Now, less than 24 hours after Mora's statements, Seeman is in the NFL headquarters on Park Avenue, staring at that giant screen. He's fully aware of the Colts' discontent. The first six weeks of the season have been relatively controversy free; not every officiating decision has been correct, but none has caused a hailstorm. And that has been a little chunk of heaven for Seeman, a one-man bundle of positive attitude and zealous defender/advocate of NFL officiating. In the last eight years, since he gave up his referee's whistle after two Super Bowl appearances to become a league administrator, Seeman has worked tirelessly to upgrade his crews. Through retirements and dismissals, he has changed nearly half of the 112 officials he inherited. Blatantly bad calls have been reduced and the consistency from crew to crew has been improved. But not even Seeman's steely will and boundless energy can make every weekend as serene as he would like.

Inside the NFL officiating office, where few owners and coaches have visited and where the media rarely are allowed, Seeman and his assistants are beginning three days of intense work. Over the next 72 hours, every play of every game in Week 7--some 1,000 in all--will be painstakingly analyzed and judged on the same criteria: Was there a penalty on that play? Was it called? Was the call correct? Did the right official make the call? Did the crew use the proper mechanics and communication on the play? Every official will be given a grade for his performance, every minute detail of his effort will be entered into the computer. And along the way, Seeman and his staff will look at the play involving Burris and Owens enough times on this big screen to determine whether Mora's nearly skin-bursting eruption was justified.

It is early on Day One and the piercing tones of ESPN's Chris Berman fill the oversized room at the end of the officiating complex. On both sides of the huge drop-down screen are four stations, complete with television monitors, arranged in a horseshoe shape. A recording studio occupies one end of the room; a back area contains a wall of editing equipment and more desks. The place looks like NASA Control. We'll call it Officiating Central. For most of the three days, full-time supervisors and retired game officials, including Art McNally, Seeman's predecessor, will be sitting at six of those stations, scrutinizing plays from the past weekend by looking at tape supplied by the teams (both end zone and sideline views) and by television (the actual televised version of the game, along with sound). Seeman, situated at a console to the right of the screen, oversees everything during breaks from the constant flow of calls from teams, the media, NFL employees and game crews--some 150 in all by the third day.

Using a sophisticated control box, the men in Officiating Central can switch between views and look at each at varying speeds, including frame by frame. When they see a play in which they want a consensus opinion from the others in the room, they reach over and press a button. The play in question is immediately transformed to the big screen. Over the three days, an assortment of plays, penalties and close calls are flashed on that screen: fumbles, interceptions, possession changes, out of bounds, grounding, illegal blocks, onside kicks, scoring attempts. Remarkably, it can take up to eight hours to analyze the officiating work in one game.

Judgment days

Sporting News, The, Nov 9, 1998 by Paul Attner

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