ESPN’s Ryan McGee’s book turns referees into (shocker!) real, likable people
What’s sweeter than a 10-year-old boy telling his dad he’s doing a great job?
Sam McGee’s intent was pure. His sense of time and place was hilariously flawed. He had wandered out to the goal line, during the 1993 football game between North Carolina and Virginia in Charlottesville, tugging on his father’s pants to praise his officiating.
Dr. Jerry McGee discreetly walked young Sam to the sideline, calmly but firmly telling his younger of two sons he couldn’t step on the field for a spectrum of reasons -- including that he might be pulverized if an ACC player accidentally ran into him.
That’s the funniest of hundreds of stories in Ryan McGee’s new book, “Sidelines and Bloodlines: A father, his sons, and our life in college football.”
Ryan McGee is a Charlotte-based writer for ESPN, covering mostly college football and motorsports. That day in 1983, 13-year-old Ryan got to shoot pictures from the sideline, thanks to a field pass his father received for being an ACC referee. Ryan says that day set his career path; that he had to find a way to make a living chronicling this.
His primary goal in writing this book, published by Triumph and released this week, was to humanize officiating; to illustrate that Dr. McGee’s people skills were as essential over 36 years of college reffing as his technical understanding of the rules.
Dr. McGee also had a long career in college administration. He retired as Wingate University’s president in 2015, moving to south Charlotte to live within miles of Ryan and Sam, an attorney. Jerry’s wife and Ryan and Sam’s mother, Hannah, died in 1999 of a brain aneurysm.
The family dynamic — how Hannah McGee juggled a teaching career with parenting the kids alone many fall weekends — is a big part of the book. Sam described why his mother never complained about Jerry being gone so many Friday nights and Saturday afternoons.
There was a game Jerry officiated at Wake Forest in the 1980s. As he emerged from a stadium tunnel post-game, Jerry had the most glowing smile his wife seen from him in a long time.
“Mom got that Dad would probably be a better husband and dad 52 weeks a year if he got to have this meaningful hobby. And it created great experiences for all of us, mom included,” Sam said. “She wasn’t as into the football as we were, but she was still into going places and being part of it.”
Experiences like Hannah seeing how Rose Bowl parades are created from 10s of thousands of flower petals pasted onto floats or taking boat tours of Niagara Falls. Or for Ryan and Sam, a shared sideline pass to that ACC game that cemented their roles as Jerry’s support team.
Ryan’s interest in photography made him the family’s “AV guy,” responsible for recording games (minus the commercials) so his father could self-review performance. Sam became so savvy about rules evaluation in middle school that he’d single out three key calls his father made each game to rehash.
Sam understood as a teenager that his father getting those three tough judgment calls right each game was the difference between a good official and a mediocre one. Jerry McGee learned that reffing high school games in Richmond County in 1966: 95% of all football calls anyone can make; the other 5% is where the paycheck is earned.
Collaborative
“Sidelines and Bloodlines” illustrates how the relationship between coaches and refs isn’t automatically adversarial, as so many fans presume.
Being objective and detached doesn’t mean officials must be distant and obstinate. Also, coaches and players don’t just address referees to complain; often they are asking questions to improve performance within the rules.
Jerry McGee figured that out as an administrator at Gardner-Webb University in the 1970s. He couldn’t referee any games involving his employer, but he could use the football staff’s game film to sharpen his own technique. He spent hours each week in Gardner-Webb’s football office at a time when TV games weren’t omnipresent and there were no DVRs or the world wide web to create video libraries.
Collaboration went both ways: Coaches and players would sometimes ask Jerry to explain nuances; a defensive back might explore that line between tight defense and pass-interference. Jerry noticed certain coaches — Clemson’s Danny Ford, for instance — had the foresight to send staffs to referee clinics so they could teach the game precisely to the edge of what rules allow.
A few years ago, Jerry McGee got a random call from a former Wingate assistant coach who became part of Mike Leach’s staff at Washington State. Leach dreamed up a crazy new trick play, and needed guidance whether it would break any rules. McGee patiently described what the formation would violate.
McGee said it’s requisite on a referee to manage his temper, so that him biting back at a coach’s haranguing doesn’t decide a game. But there are limits. He says that line is when a coach’s derision becomes “persistent and personal.”
Dan Henning crossed that line as Boston College coach in 1996. Exasperated with Henning’s verbal abuse, McGee told Henning he was a college president, and if he was BC’s president, Henning might no longer be coach the way he acted. That was Henning’s final season at BC, following players being suspended for gambling on games.
That blow-up with Henning was the outlier; McGee says 11 years retired as a ref, he counts more than 30 coaches as close friends via Facebook and email.
Tough call
Accustomed as Jerry McGee is to making tough calls, he’s relieved he retired from Wingate in 2015, long before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decisions college presidents face this school year are no-win, just like that 50-50 calls refs make in a national championship game. Right or wrong, they invite scrutiny and scorn.
Each week, McGee counsels a handful of college presidents who need a sympathetic ear and a sounding board in unprecedented times.
“Last night, I had one call me at 10 o’clock, just out of frustration. He wanted some reinforcement that he was doing the right things,” McGee said.
Just this once, Jerry McGee is relieved to sidestep making the big call:
“The first few years I was so miserable because I missed the students, I missed being around faculty and staff. With this COVID going around, this is the first time I’m really grateful to be retired.”
