Two Super Bowl refs have Charlotte connections — and one even won a ring as a player
.jpg "NFL umpire Mike Morton stands on the field during an NFL football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Miami Dolphins, Sunday, Jan. 7, 2024, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Doug Murray)")
Sunday evening in New Orleans, when Super Bowl LIX kicks off between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, there will be two officials on the field North Carolinians might have a distinct interest in.
One has officiated the most games in NFL history. The other, in his own words, is the answer to “a low-end trivia question.”
And both have connections to the Charlotte area.
The two are Boris Cheek (side-judge, No. 41) and Mike Morton (umpire, No. 89).
Cheek is a Charlotte resident and former educator at South Mecklenburg High School. He will finish the season with the most games officiated in NFL history; he tied that record — previously 460 — in late December.
Morton, meanwhile, is a Kannapolis native who works as a dentist in the area — a vocation he started after a lengthy football playing career, which started at A.L. Brown High School and UNC before a seven-year playing career in the NFL.
Sunday’s contest will mark the fourth Super Bowl for Cheek and the first for Morton. They both consider it an honor to be selected to officiate the nation’s biggest game.
“Working the Super Bowl is an extremely high honor,” said Cheek, who couldn’t field interviews from independent media during the season, per league rules, but answered questions prompted by the NFL. Those answers were then sent to The Observer for this story.
“It means that for one season,” Cheek said, “(you’ve) exemplified excellence at your position and the ability to work at a high level each and every game.”
Here’s a quick introduction of the two North Carolina referees among the seven-man crew that hundreds of millions of people will have their eyes on Sunday.
Meet Boris Cheek, side judge
Cheek, 66, entered the NFL in 1996. In 29 seasons, he’s worked both wing positions, field judge and will serve as a side judge for Sunday’s contest. He tied and then broke the record for most games officiated earlier this season, surpassing Walt Coleman, who retired in 2018 with 460 games. (Cheek’s exact total couldn’t be verified beyond 461 games, according to records available to The Observer.)
Cheek got his start officiating in Washington, D.C., “working sandlot football, church leagues, basically anything I could get my whistle on.” Like many referees, he gradually worked his way into high school football and semi-pro ball before being contacted by the Canadian Football League and turning that into a gig working for NFL Europe, a now-defunct league that served as a minor league for the NFL from 1991 to 2007.
Cheek also officiated in Super Bowls in 2008, 2016 and 2020. He and Ron Torbert will be the only two officials Sunday with previous Super Bowl officiating experience (which, for what it’s worth, isn’t uncommon).
Cheek played basketball at Morgan State and has been a resident of Charlotte for years. His daughter, Joy, played basketball at Duke after being one of the top women’s basketball recruits in Charlotte of her generation. Joy is now an assistant coach at Ole Miss.
“I wear the stripes because I enjoy the challenge of officiating at a high level,” Cheek said. “I love working under pressure situations. I feel as though I was destined to work in officiating. It was something that, from the day I put the jersey on, I was hooked. And I’ve been officiating ever since.”
Mike Morton: A rising star, and trivia question answer
If Cheek is the grizzled veteran from Charlotte, Morton is the rising star from the area.
Morton, by day, is a dentist from Kannapolis. But that’s not what makes him a trivia question: Sunday, the former NFL linebacker will become the first person to win a Super Bowl as a player and then also work a Super Bowl as an on-field official. Morton won the Super Bowl that punctuated the 1999 season, on a St. Louis Rams team known best as an offensive juggernaut, with Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk leading the way.
If you request a reaction from Morton about such a distinction, he’ll just shrug and offer a modest response — something about how he’s not the first former player to officiate in the NFL.
That’s true: Morton, while the first to win the big game and then officiate it, is one of two officials to play in a Super Bowl before reffing in one. The other is Terry Killens, who officiated in last year’s contest and who interestingly was on the opposing Tennessee Titans in that same Super Bowl from which Morton and the Rams emerged victorious.
“I’m kind of surprised,” Morton said. “There are former players who’d come along and officiated in the NFL, and I didn’t realize that those guys didn’t work a Super Bowl. It just kind of shows you how fortunate you have to be, how hard it is, and sometimes things just line up. So it’s not easy. It’s like playing. It’s hard to get there, and it’s even harder to win it.“
Morton got his start officiating in the NFL in 2022. In an interview with The Charlotte Observer at the time, he said the call that he was getting elevated to the NFL was “not quite the same but just as good as when I got the call from the Raiders saying, ‘Al Davis is on the line for you; they are going to draft you.’”
Prior to 2022, though, he had a long road to Sunday’s Super Bowl. In many ways, officiating found him.
After a long football career at A.L. Brown and then as a Tar Heel and then in the NFL, Morton admits today he was “kind of the bitter ex-player,” missing the game that had delivered so much purpose in his life previously. He was in dental school and had married his wife — who’d he eventually have five children with (four of whom are quadruplets) — but wanted to use all the knowledge and experience and joy he’d accumulated with football despite his playing days being done.
“My dad (Mike Morton Sr.) had been a high school football official, and he encouraged me to get into officiating, just to get around the game again,” he said. “And I did. I was in dental school, and then my best friend, former teammate Rob Holmberg, told me about a program where the NFL was looking for former players. So I went to this clinic they had, and then I really liked it. And then I started working JV (junior varsity), middle school, high school football.”
Turns out the Charlotte area was a great place to do that. It’s an area with a lot of officiating opportunity — not only middle and high schools but also small- and medium-colleges up to the NFL. Through hard work and eager mentors and what he just generally sums up as “good fortune,” he eventually became a referee in the ACC for several years before being called up to call the sport’s biggest game.
That’s not to say it didn’t require work: Morton, when asked if he could offer advice to aspiring officials, provided some that could only be sourced from experience. Among those bits of advice: Find a way to show up, whenever you can.
“Enjoy the journey,” Morton said. “It’s a process. It’s a long haul. Some of the best experiences you’ll have doing this is driving six hours to work a small college football game one way for $180. And working the game, hanging out with the guys, going to get something to eat, and then turning around and driving six hours the opposite direction back home. But you will make some of the best friendships, learn some of the most about football, and officiating football, that you ever will.”
Ahead of the contest featuring Saquon Barkley and Patrick Mahomes in New Orleans, Morton was prompted to remember his Super Bowl experience as a player. He noted that the atmosphere was remarkable, unforgettable, before going on to say something that feels like advice to his future self.
“But then, it’s like every other game,” he said. “You get the first kickoff, the first play or two, and then you kind of lock in and do your job. And you’re playing a game just like you played at any other level.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
