by Ryan McGee
Referee Ron Cherry shared some helpful hints he’d gathered from an officiating friend in the Big 12 who had seen Oklahoma’s offense multiple times during the regular season. Ted Jackson, our old friend from church in Raleigh, was the replay official who would be in the press box, and he joined Dad in reminding the crew that it would be perfectly okay if a review took a beat longer than normal considering the stakes in the game. Dad said to the room, “No will remember tomorrow if we took 15 seconds to make sure we got a call right.” Line judge Rich Misner and head linesman Sam Stephenson, the men guarding the line of scrimmage, warned the room that both teams run a lot of slip screens, which meant a lot of plays run right at them, so they said they might need a little extra backup when it came to watching their zones on those plays.
In the middle of the meeting, Doug Rhoads unleashed a vicious clip reel of the season’s closest plays and most controversial penalties. This was by design. The officials hadn’t had a game in a month and needed to shake off the rust. Plus, it was the biggest game in the world.
While the clips of sideline-straddling catches, horse-collar tackles, and fumble/no fumble played, Rhoads walked over and leaned in to whisper to me. “Um, you didn’t by any chance clear this story with the ACC office, did you?”
I stopped typing and looked up at Mr. Rhoads. “No. I just showed up with Dad. He said it was cool.”
“Okay,” he replied, shaking his head. “What are we going to do now? Fire him?”
The game itself had so many moments when Dad couldn’t help but tap into his lifetime with that access. His first tough call of the night came on Florida’s first touchdown, when, not unlike Robbie Bosco in the ’85 Citrus Bowl, quarterback Tim Tebow scrambled around on a busted play and spotted a receiver coming back toward him. It was Louis Murphy, who all at once caught the football and dove for the goal line as he was being wrapped up and slammed to the turf by a defender. His knee, body, and arm all hit the turf at once, and the ball was knocked loose. Dad paused for a beat. Touchdown, Florida.
Dad
In my final game, I was absolutely leaning on Mr. Neve’s favorite lesson. “Let your mind digest what your eyes have just seen.”
Dad was digesting again at the end of the first half when Sam Bradford hit an Oklahoma receiver in the hands at the goal line, but the ball popped out and was batted around like a hot rock between four different players, at one point coming perilously close to touching the turf and being blown dead. Again, Dad paused for a fraction of a second. Interception. Florida ball.
His third and final big call of the night came on one of those it-wasn’t-this-fast-in-1982 plays. What looked like a long midfield reception by Oklahoma during what looked like the game-winning drive ended with a Florida interception from Ahmad Black. The defensive black flew into the area and snatched the ball from the hands of a Sooners receiver so quickly that only a super slow-motion replay revealed how he actually pulled it off, taking the ball from between the hands of the receiver as it ever-so-briefly bounced from his gloves during the would-be catch.
Dad
I looked at the back judge, Gary Patterson, and we were both like, “Did that really just happen?” But we had both seen it. We verified it. We signaled it. “Let your mind digest what your eyes have just seen.”
In keeping with the full-circle theme of the night, this was the last time that Dad and Patterson would be sharing a field together, but it was not the first. That had happened way back in 1984, when Dad was still officiating a mix of ACC and small college games, and Patterson was a quarterback at Wofford.
The rest you know about from the beginning of this book. Me on the sideline for one last in-game chat. Dad running off the field, waving to Sam and Danny. The crew paying one more tribute. Tom Laverty showing off his Tim Tebow cleat marks. Dad wondering if he could wear his last uniform home.
Sam
I will say this. There was a moment—maybe it was after Ryan came down from the press box at halftime to say hello, maybe it was watching Dad out on the field, or maybe it was at the end. But a realization kind of came over me. I had chosen not to be a football official, and I didn’t work for ESPN.
So…wait a minute…had I just lost my lifetime pass to college football games?!
I was in the press box very late. I finished my behind-the-scenes story, “A Day with the BCS Refs,” and walked to my rental car. When I got to the hotel, I expected everyone to be in bed. Instead, I found Dad, Sam, Danny, and Marcella, whom Dad was marrying the very next weekend. Earlier, the other crewmates and their families had been there, but now only a few remained.
They were having beers and eating hotel pizza as SportsCenter showed the game highlights on the TVs above the bar, over and over again. When Danny saw me walking around the corner with my backpack, he shouted, “There he is! Come on and join us. Your Dad saw that Florida touchdown replay and now he knows for sure he got it right, so he is finally relaxed.”
Sam
That had to have been, what, 2:00 or 3:00 am? My taxi was picking me up for my flight in, like, two hours. I should have been in bed. But, whatever. As much I had always loved the games and the sideline passes and all of that, when I was a kid, this was the part that I think had the biggest impact on me. These grown-up guys, who had just been on the field for the game that everyone in town was there to see, they were letting me sit with them and hang out with them and listen to them break down the game.
Sometimes that was an uncomfortable conversation to listen to. I remember a game right there in that state, a game involving Florida, when Dad’s crew had a couple of tough calls and the crowd had turned on them early, and the talk they had as a crew, it was so hard. But they had it. Because they cared that much. There were so many others, most of them, who were just the happiest group of guys you’d ever see in your life.
And they always let me sit there with them!
The next morning, Sam was gone to his conference. Danny and I were gone back to North Carolina. Dad and Marcella were leaving soon. But first, he had to stop by the BCS Championship souvenir stand in the lobby to buy a stack of ballcaps fashioned with the flashy game logo.
Dad
As soon as I got home, I drove to Rockingham and took hats to Ken Rankin and Jimmy Maske, the last of my old-school high school officiating friends. Then I drove to Coach Eutsler’s. I told them all the same thing—that I wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for them. Them and a lot of mentors and friends who were already gone.
I always did that, after every big bowl game I ever worked. All the way down to the last one.
Coach’s Timeout with Frank Beamer
“The last time you and I were at a game with these two teams, I wasn’t super happy with your dad…”
It is Monday night, September 3, 2018, and Frank Beamer, the now-retired former Virginia Tech head coach, has just emerged from the tunnel at Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium. I am there to do a Goodyear “Blimpcast” of the game with my ESPN colleague Marty Smith, but thanks to a tropical storm our ride has been grounded. Instead, we are on a tiny stage behind one end zone of the stadium, about to broadcast the game in a steady Tallahassee downpour. Beamer is there to support his old team. It has been nearly 13 years since the Hokies’ loss to FSU in the inaugural ACC Championship, but he can’t help but bring it up.
“I’m not mad at your dad anymore,” the just-elected College Football Hall of Famer says with a handshake and a wink. “Even if I was, I’m too nice of a guy to tell you that.”
Beamer is joking, because he is absolutely too nice of a guy to stay mad. Only a man as nice as Frank Beamer would be at the center of the story that he reminds me of next.
“Does your dad still have that football we sent him?”
The week before the 2009 BCS Championship, the Orange Bowl was also played at Dolphin Stadium, Beamer’s ACC champion Hokies defeating the Big East cham
ps from the University of Cincinnati. On the eve of that game, the two teams were at a dinner and, making small talk, Beamer asked the Orange Bowl executives what conference would be supplying the officials for the BCS title game the next week.
“When they told us it was the ACC, we all realized that was going to be your dad’s crew, and we knew that was going to be his last game.”
Beamer had his equipment manager retrieve a Virginia Tech–branded football. Then he explained to his feasting team who Dr. Jerry McGee was and why they should take a moment to honor him. Beamer had the ball passed around the room with a marker so that everyone on the roster could sign it. Then he handed the ball to the Orange Bowl brass.
“I told them to hang onto that football, make sure that Jerry McGee got it the next week, and to tell him that it was from his old Blacksburg friends from back in the Big East and the ACC.”
There in Tallahassee a decade later, I tell Frank Beamer that the football is displayed prominently among Dad’s college football collection. He does indeed beam.
“See?” he says, slapping me on the shoulder. “I told you I wasn’t mad at him anymore.”
12. Zebra Emeritus
The morning after Dad’s last game, I made the ultimate sportswriter misstep. I opened ESPN.com, clicked on my story “A Day with the BCS Refs,” and scrolled down into the comments section. This was the first sentence that I read:
“Of course this idiot would write something nice about these referee idiots. His last name is the same as the field judge. It’s his damn dad. Refs suck.”
In the years since Dad’s last game, I have written about him often. I have talked about him even more. I’ve done it so much that it has become a running joke with my ESPN college football coworkers. “Hey, Ryan, your dad was a ref? Wow! You’ve never mentioned that!”
But why wouldn’t I? I now have the opportunity to cover college football, the very dream that was ignited on the sideline at Virginia in 1983, and my perspective on the game, which I believe to be unique, comes directly from my officiating bloodline. As a result, it will always be my ongoing mission to humanize officials, to try and help sports fans develop a better understanding of that third team on the field. People don’t have to like officials. Most never will, and I know that. However, I honestly believe they can be smarter football fans if they have a better understanding of the men and women who blow their whistles not just on autumn weekends, but in every sport at every level.
Heck, that’s why this book you currently hold in your hands exists!
Sam
I have seen firsthand that watching the officials in addition to the teams makes the game more interesting; I have seen that happen with my friends who started watching Dad because I made them. I know I probably drove them crazy with it in the beginning, but then one of them might say, “Man, your dad was all over that pass downfield,” and that feels like a win.
But we aren’t naïve here. We know there will always be way more people booing the officials or making fun of them than paying attention to them or respecting them, especially now.
In 2006, I wrote a two-page “Total Access” photo spread for ESPN The Magazine, taking a photographer behind the scenes with Dad’s crew for a Maryland-Virginia game in Charlottesville. The experience was amazing. I was back on the sideline at UVA, not as a kid with my camera from Santa Claus, but with Les Stone, an award-winning, globe-trotting photographer who made his name as one of the planet’s preeminent eyes for capturing the horrors of war. Les, attending his first college football game, had an incredible time as we watched Dad’s crew meet, warm up, officiate a track meet of an offensive game, and then give Dad’s old friend Clark Gaston the game ball for his 275th and final time on the field.
Les sent the images back to the magazine headquarters in New York. I was convinced this would be the kind of insider piece that would change the minds of millions of readers about the men they booed every Saturday. Then my editor called. I was sure he was going to heap praise upon me and tell me how I had forever altered his view of the men and women in stripes.
“Dude, we’re going to lead with a big photo of two refs stretching their quads like they are about to play in the game or something. It’s hilarious.”
Dad
Down at Clemson one day, I was running off the field with Dr. Ernie Benson, a groundbreaking HBCU educator, and another official who was an attorney. Between us we had nine college degrees. This ol’ boy in a Pabst Blue Ribbon hat who had about three teeth, he shook a beer at us and yelled, “Y’all’s the three dumbest sumbitches ever been down here!”
You know what? We’re probably never going to convince that guy that officials are actually pretty smart people who love football even more than he does. And that’s okay.
But that doesn’t mean we will stop trying.
Remember that “Hey Ref!” Q&A a few chapters back? For several years, Dad and I fielded questions from readers like that, and they seemed to like it. At that same time, I pitched a “Zebra Report” series for ESPN.com Insider, where I would call officials, many of whom I’d known for years and years, and they would give me “anonymous official” scouting reports on teams playing in big upcoming games. For example, a “Big East Head Linesman” provided a fantastic bit of info on West Virginia, then coached by Red Bull–guzzling, crazy-haired head coach Dana Holgorsen. The official explained there was always one stretch during every game when the WVU sideline would descend into chaos, with coaches yelling and players seemingly lost. He said that if an opponent were to recognize when that sideline inevitability was taking place, that window was the time to strike on offense.
Based on the reaction and page views, people seemed to really like that series. The teams, it turned out, didn’t much care for it, particularly the folks in West by-god Virginia.
I believe the phone call from Doug Rhoads went something like this: “Ryan, Doug Rhoads here. I just left our national officiating coordinators meeting, and we talked about you for 45 minutes. Some coaches have complained about our guys talking to you about their guys. You know, I was a journalism major, so I love the idea. And we do look smart as hell. But you need to know that new regulations are being put into place stating that officials can no longer talk directly to the media without permission from the coordinators. So…good job.”
That was almost a decade ago. Even now, I still run into officials in airports and they start laughing and running away from me. “No! I can’t violate the Ryan McGee Rule!”
Dad
Yeah, Ryan got a little too specific on those. But the information was good. Otherwise, the coaches wouldn’t have been so mad about it.
So, instead of aiming for mass audience officiating education, we are back to where we stared, trying to teach the public—and my press box colleagues—one officiating-hater at a time. And even though we can’t be at games together very often, the game day text chains between me, Dad, and Sam remain a fall Saturday constant.
When I am covering a big college football game and there is a question about a downfield play—in or out of bounds, catch or no catch, pass interference or not—several of my fellow writers will instinctively look over to me and ask, “Well, what’s your Dad say?” Within seconds, even without my asking, the text will arrive from Pops and I will announce to my row, “Dad says no way on that DPI!”
Sam
That’s just how we watch football, and it will always be how we watch football.
One year, my alma mater, Wake Forest, made it to the Orange Bowl, and I took my wife down to Miami. Our seats were awful. If you ever see the huge Jumbotron in the upper deck at Dolphin Stadium, my back was resting up against that. We were as far away from the field as we could possibly be and still be inside the stadium.
Right before one play I started screaming from the top row, “Louisville has 12 men on the field! Louisville has 12 men on the field!” The flag was thrown a
nd the PA announcer says, “Penalty, Louisville, substitution infraction, 12 men on the field.”
I looked over at this guy who was staring at me. He said, “Wait, do you count the number of players on the field on every play?”
I said, “Of course I do. Don’t you?”
To this point we’ve shared with you so many of the officiating questions Dad receives on a regular basis. But what about the question Sam and I hear the most? We get it from friends, from family, and we’ve always really gotten it from Dad’s friends in stripes.
Why didn’t we follow in Dad’s cleat steps and become college football officials, too?
Sam
When I was a young man and grinding as a young attorney, people would ask me that question. I always said, “I have a very stressful job, the last thing I need is people yelling at me on the weekend.” Or, “Why I would walk into a pressure cooker situation on the weekend? I’m already getting that all week.”
My line always was, “Nobody yells at me when I’m fishing.”
But here’s the problem. Here’s what I didn’t get. The genius of this hobby for Dad was that it was a command performance. He had to be there. So, he could never say, “I’m too busy for my hobby.”
Well, I have been too busy to fish most of my adult life. So, part of me says that if I had gone into officiating football when I was in my early twenties, like Dad did, it would have forced me to make sure that my hobby, something I was really passionate about, didn’t get pushed to the side.
My wife, Marci, has told me before that I should have done it. I think she understands, like Ryan’s wife, Erica, does, that we do have that real love for it.
Back in the day, Dad used to mention it every once in while. He felt like I could really see what happened on the field. And I know that was 100 percent because I was watching games through the lens of an official at a very early age.
