So Much for the Official Silence : At Their Convention, Referees Show They Are Now Willing to Be Heard as Well as Seen

Traditionally, sports referees, like small children at the dinner table, are to be seen and not heard.

For them, it’s understood that the best officiated game is the one in which they go mostly unnoticed.

The people they work for, from high schools to colleges to the pros, have helped foster this anonymity. Officiating assignments frequently are closely guarded secrets until just before game time. Officials’ dealings with the press have been basically nonexistent for years. To the reporter who approaches after a game, the answer is usually, “I’ll only answer questions about the rules.” That has been all they are allowed to say, and it has been a convenient shield.

But if last week in Orlando was any indication, the guys with the whistles are becoming officials of a different stripe. They held their national convention here, and indications were that they are talking more, willing to be interviewed more and seemingly much more interested in how the public perceives them. They even held a lively session on ethics, a topic that frequently brings organizations to their knees.

The National Assn. of Sports Officials attracted big names in the business, from the NFL’s Jerry Markbreit and Jerry Seeman, the league’s director of officiating; to baseball’s recently retired umpiring veteran, Doug Harvey; to college basketball officials Don Rutledge, Dave Libbey and Ed Hightower; to college football veteran Tom Thamert.

Markbreit, 58, an NFL official for 18 years, set the tone with a luncheon speech that included officiating war stories.

“I live in Chicago, and one of the rules is that you don’t work games in your home city,” he said. “But they called, after 11 years of never doing it, and said that the schedule was working out in such a way that I’d have to work a Bears’ game at Soldier Field.

“I thought that was fine. No plane trip, get home for dinner that night. Plus they told me it would probably be a nothing game because--this was 1986--the Bears were playing the Packers and the Packers had won about two games at that point. So, I figured, easy game, easy day.

“Well, that’s just how it was going. Easy. Until about three minutes to go in the second period. The Bears’ quarterback, Jim McMahon, rolls out and throws a pass downfield. One of my jobs is to watch the quarterback, protect him. So I watch and the ball goes downfield and six, seven, eight seconds elapse and here comes No. 94 from Green Bay.

“Now the play is over, and he keeps coming. I can’t believe it. He picks up McMahon and slams him to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I thought he was dead. My first-ever game in Chicago and I let somebody get killed.

“Well, my flag hits the ground before McMahon does. But before I can toss this guy (defensive end Charles Martin), along comes a Chicago Bear player who saw all this and whacks No. 94 on the head as hard as he can. I reach for my flag, it’s already on the ground. I reach for my hat, but then I figure, what the hell, there’s no way this can be fairly handled with offsetting penalties.

“Plus, by that time, Mike Ditka is way out on the field and saying something about how offsetting penalties will mean I’ll never get home for dinner.

“So I go to No. 94 and I tell him he is out of there, and he tells me he’s not going anywhere. And I tell him if he doesn’t start moving right now, I’ll let the entire Chicago Bear team beat him up. And he says he has rethought his position and he’ll be leaving now.”

Amid the humor, Markbreit’s message was clear: Officials have to be alert at all times, even in games that supposedly don’t mean anything.

“It was the most important call of my career,” Markbreit said. “But I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t been in position, if I hadn’t been paying as much attention just because it wasn’t a key game.”

Another official who was in correct position and still wound up in a ruckus is Thamert, the veteran college football referee from Pittsburgh. He was working the Notre Dame-Brigham Young football game last fall when Lou Holtz, Notre Dame’s coach, put a headlock on him along the sidelines.

“It was a rout, something like 46-16, Notre Dame, with about three minutes to go,” Thamert recalled. “BYU completes a pass over the middle. I go to spot the ball, and the side judge comes over and tells me he has an unsportsmanlike call for 15 yards against Coach Holtz. I asked for what? And the side judge says that Holtz threw his hat in the stands.

“Now, I have no idea what is going on, but I know that that kind of penalty against a coach is a serious matter, and I can see Holtz starting to come out on the field. So I yell at him to just let me finish what I’m doing, spotting the ball, and I’ll be over.

“Soon, I start to walk over to him and he’s out on the field and I can see he is hot. And he is saying, ‘Tom, if they are allowed to do that, then I’m not teaching my kids right.’

“Now, I’m four or five feet away from him by now, still with no clue what he is talking about, and so I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ Later, in thinking back about it, that was a clear indication to him that he should show me what he was talking about, so he reached around me in kind of a headlock, then apparently realized what he’d done and let go immediately.

“I suddenly understood. He thought BYU was holding his linemen, and he wanted to show me how, especially after I kind of invited him to. So he did what he did, I walked back out to the field, the game went on and I never thought another thing about it.”

But the incident happened on national television and the implication was that Holtz had assaulted an official.

“I was listening to the radio on my drive home to Pittsburgh, and during the game recap I hear one of the announcers say my name and say that I should have tossed Holtz out. Still, I’m not really tumbling to what this is all about until I get home and I get a phone call from Holtz. Now, I start to understand what people thought and realize what a fishbowl Holtz lives in.

“But the only thing Holtz was concerned about was whether he had embarrassed me. And once I had assured him he hadn’t, and that I understood exactly why he did what he did and how it was a completely trivial matter, except to those who didn’t know what happen, we had a nice talk.

“It was funny how big the whole thing became, though. After a couple of days of hearing about it on radio and TV, my wife finally turned to me and said, ‘You know, the thing that bothers me about this is that, every time I try to hug you, you push me away.’ ”

For the better part of the week, officials from all over the country mingled and talked. Everywhere Harvey went he was surrounded by younger officials, asking questions and listening to the tales. Same with Rutledge and Libbey and Hightower--prominent men in their field, for some a profession, for many an avocation.

Markbreit talked about the Super Bowl in 1988, in which he did everything correctly except the coin toss. He couldn’t figure out which was heads and which was tails on the commemorative coin.

“Afterward, Pete Rozelle came into the locker room, all nicely tanned--I think his makeup man was with him--and shook everybody’s hand on what a great job we had done. He found me in the shower and said, ‘Markbreit, once you got past the coin toss, you did fine.’ ”

Thamert said that he and Holtz were kind of kindred spirits now, because their headlock play was one of the three finalists for this year’s ESPY Award, ESPN’s annual vote of fans for funniest-strangest sports happening of the year. The two other finalists were a rabbit running on the field during a game, and a ball that hit a sprinkler control, turning on the entire sprinkling system in the middle of the game. The rabbit won.

“Poor Lou Holtz and Tom Thamert,” Thamert deadpanned. “We were that close to winning, but we got beat out by a hare.”

For all the levity, there was real business by people who are serious about what they do. Besides the discussion on ethics, the convention included sessions for umpires on seeing balls and strikes better and included the use of a ball machine in a ballroom; on self-evaluation, on burnout, even on the ethics of dealing with coaches and schools while remaining neutral.

The organization was founded 13 years ago by the Mano family of Racine, Wis., a family of sports officials headed by father Rudy, who remains active in the organization. His son, Barry, is the president and driving force.

Although there are national and local organizations of sports officials all over the country, NASO has emerged as the leader.

NASO has a membership of 17,300, most of whom pay the $59 annual membership fee to get comprehensive medical and liability insurance while they are officiating.

The portion of the membership that chose to be in Orlando last week did not lack for examples of leadership.

Markbreit told of Charlie Stacey, a young man with cerebral palsy whom he befriended when Stacey was 11. Now 16, Stacey still gets a letter from Markbreit after each game he works, Markbreit telling him about the game and the inside workings.

When Markbreit drew an assignment at Denver’s Mile High Stadium, he got tickets to the Bronco game for Stacey and his family, who live nearby. And after carrying the young man out to the field to meet and talk to some Broncos, Markbreit was so overcome with emotion that he gave Stacey a big kiss on the cheek. The next week, Stacey’s father called to say everything had gone wonderfully, but that Charlie now refused to wash his cheek.

As Markbreit talked, his wife, Bobbie, sitting in the audience, wiped away a tear and said, “I have heard that story a million times and it still gets to me.”

NASO ended its convention by giving its top award, the Golden Whistle Award, to umpire Steve Palermo, widely known for his comeback attempt from near total paralysis after he was shot while going to the aid of others during a robbery attempt.

Palermo was not able to attend, so NASO did a 10-minute video with him. Then Karen Brinkman, wife of umpire Joe Brinkman, one of Palermo’s best friends, accepted the award for Palermo.

It was an emotional moment and seemed a fitting end to a convention of people who are no longer a collection of shrinking violets.