Super Sunday

Local official finally gets 'the call' to work last week's big NFL game

Bob Forrest Sports Writer

Ada — The week before the biggest sporting event played each year on American soil, Ada’s Derick Bowers got the call: he was going to the Super Bowl for the first time in his six-year career as an official in the National Football League.

“I don’t know if I can describe the thought process and the feeling you get when you get that phone call,” Bowers — one of only two Oklahoma residents among the 120 officials currently working in the NFL — said last week. “As far as officiating goes, there are two calls you remember. One is the one that says you’ve been hired in the NFL and the other is that you’ve been chosen to work the Super Bowl.”

Bowers, a 1978 graduate of Ada High School, got that first call after spending two decades as a high school and college official, with the last seven of those in the Big 12 and its predecessor, the old Big 8 Conference. He prepared for his professional debut with a couple of seasons as an official with NFL Europe, and since making his NFL debut in 2003, Bowers has been one of the busiest of the men in striped shirts in a league that has become an American obsession over the past half-century.

“I worked my first playoff game (Minnesota versus Green Bay at historic Lambeau Field) in my second year (in 2004), and that was very exciting,” Bowers recalled. “You get a phone call that you’re going to work a playoff game, so you know you’ve had a pretty good season.

“It was warm by Green Bay standards — it was only about 22 or 23 degrees,” he added. “I happened to look up during a timeout, and the steam was rising up from the players in the huddle like you see on TV sometimes and off of me, and I had to pinch myself to make sure it wasn’t a dream.”

Bowers, a representative for All-Pro Sales (a manufacturers rep for electrical products) when he’s not working or preparing for an NFL game, has been on the field for at least one playoff contest in each of the past five seasons. He was the head linesman for last Sunday’s Pittsburgh-Arizona thriller in just his second season of eligibility to work the Super Bowl.

“Basically, we’re graded on every play of every game (during the regular season and the playoffs), and the people who grade out the best at their positions are the ones who call the Super Bowl,” Bowers explained. “You have to have been in the league for five years, and you have to have worked (at least one) championship game or a playoff game each of the last three years. If you’re a second-year official and you grade out No. 1 (in the league), you don’t qualify.”

As the head linesman, Bowers is responsible for a myriad of things before the snap on each play and for watching a specified group of players once the play begins.

“The short version is that I was responsible for substitutions from my side (of the field), I count the offensive players and make sure the offense is lined up in a legal formation, I’m responsible for false starts on offense and off-sides and neutral zone infractions by the defense, illegal motion and illegal shifts and also for moving the chains, and all that is before the ball is snapped,” he said. “After the ball is snapped, we each have certain guys we key on depending on whether it’s a running or passing play.”

A Super Bowl officiating crew is basically an all-star team made up of the 10 dozen men who work the games leading up to the most anticipated Sunday on the U. S. sports calendar. During the regular season, Bowers worked on a crew headed by second-year referee John Parry, but he was the only member of his regular crew to grade out high enough to work the Super Bowl. That crew was headed by NFL veteran Terry McAulay, and Bowers said he and the guys he worked with last Sunday felt afterward that the game had gone about as well as could be expected from an officiating point of view.

“We were pleased with how it went,” Bowers recalled. “We’re only human. There are times when we’ll miss some (calls).

“There were some penalties we probably shouldn’t have called that we did and some that could have called that we didn’t,” he added, “but overall I think it went pretty well.”

A relatively controversy-free Super Bowl was the climax to a regular season in which NFL officials were put under a microscope on an almost weekly basis, especially after veteran NFL referee Ed Hochuli blew a pivotal call that probably cost San Diego an early-season victory at Denver. As things worked out, Hochuli’s mistake didn’t have any long-term effects, since the Chargers rallied to tie the Broncos for the NFL West title and went into the playoffs on a tiebreaker, and Bowers said he didn’t believe the controversy surrounding Hochuli affected the way he and his crew worked their games the rest of the season.

“Our goal is to call a perfect game,” he said. “We all make mistakes, and (Hochuli) just happened to blow the whistle a little quick on that call. We didn’t change anything after it happened. We didn’t change our philosophy. We just try to learn from it and go on.”

Bowers said learning is a constant with NFL officials, who are constantly grading their own work and being graded by others in the league office, and he said that hasn’t changed in his six seasons.

“It’s pretty much stayed the same,” he said of his job. “The NFL is always looking for ways to improve the game. The changes usually pertain to the safety of the players.”

And, he said, working the game on Sunday is only a small part of what he and the league’s other 119 officials do during a typical week.

“Right after the ballgame, they give us a DVD copy of the game, and on the way home on the plane, we look at the game and make notes,” Bowers said. “If we have comments, we e-mail those to the referee, and he sends us his comments on Monday. On Tuesday, the NFL office grades every play of every game, and they send us their comments. We also get another DVD from the home team with different angles so that you can see things like contact downfield.”

Other than Sunday, Wednesday is the biggest day of the week for Bowers and his colleagues.

“On Wednesday, we get our grades back,” he explained. “We’re always networking and learning from other people during the week. On Saturday I take the first plane out of Oklahoma City because we have to be at the game 24 hourse before kickoff.

“When we get there, we have a meeting that lasts three to four hours,” Bowers added. “We watch tapes from the previous week and look at films of the teams’ previous games to look at formations, then we take a test on Saturday. On Sunday, we have a devotional and breakfast as a crew and we have to be at the stadium by two and a half to three hours before kickoff.”

Bowers said all NFL officials are recruited from major college conferences, adding that an official with designs on working at the next level has to make his interest known to the league office to set things in motion.

“Once you get to a major college level, if you have a desire to move up you contact the NFL and fill out an application,” he said. “At some point n time — and you never know when it will happen — they sent out scouts to watch your ball games.

“They watch you over a period of two to three years, and if they like what they see, you go through an interview process and a security background process,” Bowers added. “They used to send you to NFL Europe (which played its final season last spring) for a year or so to see how you acted on and off the field, because you’re representing the NFL. I went to NFL Europe twice before I was hired, then I went back the year I was hired to help train some of the new guys, and last year I went back again and took my family.”

Bowers said his family — wife Sandra and sons Heath, Scotty, Brady and Brooks — have been a key to his success in the NFL, adding that he was glad to have the opportunity to take them to Europe and, last Sunday, to Tampa for the biggest game of his career.

“My wife and the boys are absolutely the greatest supporters that I have,” he noted. “That was one of the neatest things about this weekend. You could see the grins on their faces when I came out of the dressing room and they were in end zone. That was a feeling you just can’t describe.

“In our officiating contract, it says we can bring family members (to games) three times during the regular season,” he added. “During the playoffs, we can’t bring anybody unless it’s the Super Bowl.”

As a head linesman, Bowers doesn’t have the visibility of the referee, who explains calls to the television audience and the media and is basically the face and the voice of each officiating crew. He said, however, that he doesn’t really have aspirations beyond his current position.

“I’ve never really thought about (being a referee),” Bowers explained. “I like my job. Most of the referees (in the NFL) had referee experience in college.

“I have only worked two positions in the NFL,” he said. “I was hired as a line judge, and after the first preseason game my second year I moved from line judge to head linesman because another guy retired. The referee is the crew chief. He might only have five years in the NFL and some guys on his crew might have more experience, but you have to have one guy in charge, and the NFL selects referees based on past experience.”

Bowers said it was a thrill to work his first Super Bowl, but he said his responsibilities on the field prevented him from really getting caught up in the drama surrounding Pittsburgh’s last-minute 27-23 victory.

“It was very exciting to be a part of the game, but as far as the momentum going from one team to the other team, I really didn’t notice it,” recalled Bowers, who also worked the Atlanta-Arizona first-round playoff game this season. “I usually don’t notice it very much because we’re so focused on all the things we do officiating the ballgame.

“Somebody else is in charge of keeping score,” he added. “Usually when we get in the locker room after the game, we have to ask what the score was. We know who won because one team was jumping up and down, but we don’t usually notice the score.”

Although he has worked a number of games over the years with finishes to rival the Super Bowl, Bowers said no one game really stands out.

“Hopefully I never affected a game in a bad sense,” said Bowers, who worked one Red River Shootout between OU and Texas while in the Big 12. “I worked the Buffalo-Miami game in Toronto last year and I’ve officiated New England and the Jets. Those folks just don’t like each other. Those games stand out because there’s such a rivalry.”

And Bowers said being an NFL official — especially one who now has a Super Bowl on his resume’ — hasn’t hurt in his full-time job.

“It’s opened a few doors,” he said.

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