by Ryan McGee
Dad
We did talk about it. I always thought Sam had a tremendous sense of what was happening on the field. He had that ability to see the whole field. I think I knew that going all the way back to when he would be waiting for me when I got home from a game, with his sheet of paper and those three or four plays he questions about. But that’s also how he made it into Yale Law and became an incredible attorney, because he approaches everything in his life like that.
I’m not disappointed that neither one of the boys became football officials. I’d say it’s all worked out pretty well.
I never had that officiating conversation with Dad. Despite my deep appreciation for officiating, I never even considered doing it. From that very first time I snuck into the tower at Carter–Finley Stadium during an NC State scrimmage, it was the press box that was calling to me. Thankfully, my career path was established at a young age. It already had me fulfilling my childhood “How do I get paid to do this?!” sideline dreams.
Besides, if there were any doubts in my head as to whether or not I’d made the right football decision, they were silenced on March 31, 2018. That’s when the SEC Network asked me to be the field judge in South Carolina’s Garnet versus Black spring game.
There I was, on the same Williams-Brice Stadium sideline featured on Dad’s Wall of Screaming. I wasn’t receiving an earful from Joe Morrison or a face-in-the-hands reception from Lou Holtz. Instead, I had Gamecocks head coach Will Muschamp jawing at me. “We’ve got the wrong McGee out here! Where’s your dad?!” Instead of me and Sam watching Dad on TV, they were watching me. Instead of me sitting in the stands with my Mom, my daughter Tara was there with her mom. And instead of Mom hoping her husband wouldn’t be run over by an All-Conference linebacker, my wife, Erica, was the one doing the worrying.
Honestly, I thought it wasn’t going to be that hard. I mean, c’mon, I’d been on sidelines since I was 13. I had always been there to shadow the field judge, and that was exactly the position that SEC officiating coordinator Steve Shaw made sure I was in now. How big of a difference could there really be standing on my regular side of the sideline as opposed to Dad’s? What was it, six feet? It might as well have been half a mile. Only a few steps forward, onto the green grass, and I found that everything moved into warp speed.
I had one great moment, when recently retired head coach Steve Spurrier snuck onto the field to catch a pass from the South Carolina team, whom he’d been coaching the year before. But when the pass was behind him, the Head Ball Coach lost his footing and flopped right onto his back, the ball landing in the grass by his head. I ran over and asked, “Coach, you okay?” When he said yes, I pulled my flag off my belt and tossed it onto the turf next to him.
“What was that for?!” he asked me as he stood up and brushed himself off.
“That was for that bulls--t you yelled at my father during the ’98 Citrus Bowl against Penn State!”
I also had one not-so-great moment. Okay, I had a few. But the big one was, naturally, a bang-bang touchdown catch right over the front corner end zone pylon, just like Dad’s calls in the ’97 Rose Bowl and ’85 Citrus Bowl. The pass came right at me; the defender and receiver flew across my feet. I got totally turned around, and when I rallied, I realized that I had committed the ultimate field judge sin. I let the play get behind me. However, I was very proud of the fact that my feet were still in the right place, right on the goal line.
I signaled touchdown. Unfortunately, it was not a touchdown. Also, my feet were totally not at the goal line, as I had believed they were. They were at the 3-yard line. My real-life counterpart was Blake Parks, a longtime SEC field judge and a great guy. If I’d been paid a dollar for every time Blake had to say to me, “Back up!” or “No, straddle that goal line!” or “Get the spot, get the spot, get the spot!” I could have bought a skybox at Williams-Brice Stadium.
After the game, the sufficiently crusty SEC evaluator, NFL veteran Larry Rose, showed that play back to the entire crew, our ESPN media members as well as our SEC counterparts. He said, “Ryan McGee’s father was as mechanically sound as anyone who has ever worn this uniform. But Ryan McGee made more positioning mistakes in one afternoon than his father made in the entire decade of the 1990s.”
It was an insanely fun day. It was a dream come true. But if it’s cool with y’all, I’m going to stay in my press box chair with my laptop, writing my words.
Sam
Ryan, how early do you get to the stadium when you are covering a game for ESPN?
I tell brother Sam that I walk into the gate as early as they will let me in there. Always.
Sam
Because that’s the best part, right? Whether I was a ball boy at Furman or going somewhere with Dad, getting into the stadium before everyone else, that was the best part. It felt just like when I was playing baseball. The smell of the fresh-cut grass. The pregame radio show is playing on the loudspeakers. The stands are empty. You are a part of it. You feel like you are a part of the game.
Dad
Exactly. I had the same feeling then that I did when I played baseball. My cleats on the concrete. The music playing. It was like those John Philip Sousa marches over the loudspeaker in Rockingham.
Every time I officiated a game, from high school to Pasadena, we always did the same thing. We got to the stadium hours before kickoff and the first thing we did was put down our bags and say, “Let’s go look at the field!”
We would walk around Death Valley at Clemson, and it would be 84,000 empty seats. There would be a couple of guys laying the lines for the sideline phones. The equipment guys would be setting up the bench area. Maybe someone was touching up the paint on the field just a little. There would be a half dozen people in the stadium, and us.
Then we would go into the locker room and get dressed, have a meeting, and when we came back out, now there are 84,000 people in there, and the bands are playing and the teams are warming up.
It’s crazy. It makes the hairs stand up my arm right now just talking about it.
The empty stadium conversation is taking place in the basement of my house in Charlotte. The table where we have just spent nearly two hours swapping stories is covered in empty pizza boxes, yellowed newspaper clippings (Academic makes calls on, off field), stacks of photos, and a couple of 30-year-old VHS tapes labeled in my teenaged handwriting.
We have retired to the television side of the room. I have YouTube fired back up and I’m riding the search bar. I dial up the 1985 Florida Citrus Bowl and find the touchdown play that still drives Dad nuts. Sam and I are comfortably reclined on couches, but Dad is on his feet, swaying back and forth. As the BYU receiver leaps toward the pylon past the outstretched arms of a Buckeyes defender, Dad leans in. The images are just as grainy as they were on our VCR in Raleigh, the play we watched and rewound over and over again. Like then, Dad is still sure he missed the call. And like then, Sam and I are still sure he got it right.
“You guys are mean, picking on your old man like this…”
Dad watches the film from ’85 and starts talking about how much the game of college football changed during his years on the field. He talks about the Wishbone offense giving way to the Fun ‘n’ Gun and the Spread. He speaks of stadiums with crowds of 15,000 fans drawing crowds five times that size. Film into HDTV. Crews of five guys, hydrating with beer and steak, giving way to eight-man teams using eating and drinking processes prescribed by sports medicine specialists. Officiating plays from six yards downfield…then 10…then 15…then 22…and 22 still didn’t seem far enough to keep the quickening plays in front of you. Motel rooms full of chicken feathers in Jefferson City, Tennessee, to a palatial Fort Lauderdale resort on the eve of the national championship game. Bo Jackson, Charlie Ward, Julius Peppers, and Tim Tebow. Joe Paterno, Bobby Bowden, Danny Ford, Vince Dooley…
“Dan Henning!” Sam interjects.
“Dan Henning!
” Dad and I shout back.
The McGee Boys are watching college football together. We are laughing and we are smiling.
You will never see us look happier than we are right now.
Just like Mom said.
Photo Gallery
Growing up in Rockingham, North Carolina, Jerry McGee always had his Johnny Lujack football.
Young Sam McGee wore his dad’s black referee hat 24/7, including on school picture day.
McGee family at 1990 Orange Bowl, No. 4 Notre Dame vs. No. 1 Colorado. (From left to right) Ryan, Jerry, Hannah, and Sam.
The good news? Thirteen-year-old Ryan captured Virginia’s Barry Word scoring the game winner. The bad news? Ryan was run over one second later.
Part of every official’s pregame checklist—locating the family in the grandstands. Jerry has just spotted the McGees at the 1990 Orange Bowl.
Ryan and Jerry together on that same Virginia sideline 19 years later. (Les Stone)
Dad has hit a career milestone, celebrating with Sam, Ryan, and Hannah. The office had a referee-themed cake made for the occasion.
Ryan, Jerry, and Sam at inaugural ACC Championship in 2005. The boys thought it was Dad’s last game. It was not.
Ryan doing his best to embarrass mother, Hannah, at 1996 Holiday Bowl—and doing a fine job of it.
Jerry McGee’s officiating photos on display in his Charlotte, North Carolina, home, also known as The Wall of Screaming.
The Wall of Screaming features, among other shots, South Carolina’s Joe Morrison expressing some displeasure during the ’84 Clemson game…
…Mike Shula with a question about a call during Duke vs. Alabama in 2006...
…and this isn’t merely a photo of Jerry McGee and Lou Holtz, ref and coach. It’s a pair of emotionally struggling husbands.
October 1, 1994, McGee’s Willis Reed moment, blasted through the air at Louisville, but reentering the game. “Where’s my hat?” (WDRB-TV)
McGee racing Virginia Tech’s Antonio Freeman to the goal line in 1992. (Virginia Tech Athletics)
Chasing USC’s Dwayne Jarrett on a 62-yard touchdown catch and about to flag the Michigan defender for a personal foul in the 2007 Rose Bowl. (USC Athletics)
The best part of the gig is the friends made along the way. The inseparable duo of Bill Booker and Jerry McGee.
McGee and longtime ACC colleague Doug Rhoads at Duke in 1984, during the ACC officials’ (thankfully) brief shorts experiment.
The “Virginia Crew” of 1998, McGee’s favorite season on the field. The men who also helped him get through the grief of ’99.
There was no greater honor in McGee’s career than working the 1991 Army-Navy Game, held on the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.
The 2007 Rose Bowl crew meeting grand marshal George Lucas. The Star Wars–obsessed McGee sons are still jealous of this.
Pregame laughs with line judge Rick Page, referee Jack Childress, McGee, and umpire Clark Gaston. Nearly a century of combined college officiating experience in this photo. (Les Stone)
From his first big-time conference game to the antics of Danny Ford to the Bowden Bowl, Clemson’s Death Valley is home to many of Jerry McGee’s fondest memories.
Jerry McGee in the final minutes of the 2009 BCS Championship, conversing with Ryan on the sideline as the career ticks down.
Forever the Field Judge.
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 by Ryan McGee, Dr. Jerry E. McGee, and Sam McGee
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Triumph Books LLC, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610.
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ISBN: 978-1-62937-787-2
eISBN: 978-1-64125-493-9
Design by Nord Compo
Photos courtesy of McGee family collection unless otherwise indicated