This is an extract from an interview on Nice Call Ref which aired on Demoine Amplified radio with Jim MacLean. This was my favourite interview of the lot. It's a pity they stopped producing the show.
One time we got called in to go do a game down in Missouri. There was a screw up on officials and they were desperate so they sent three of us from the Big 8 and three were coming in from this southern conference and it was North East Mississippi State that came to town and they had a receiver named Jerry Rice. So we went down to do this game. This is when you ran split crews. The crew from their conference and they pulled us in from the Big 8 although our team wasn’t from the Big 8. When you’re running a split crew we always ran a detailed pregame meeting and everything.
And we kind of knew we were in a little bit of trouble when one of the officials said Mr Brown (Bill Brown was out Referee) “what do we do if we have an inadvertent flag?” and Bill said “Well you know we’ll pick it up and we will talk about it and we will deal with it but let’s not have any inadvertent flags.”
“Alright Sir, Thank you. Now what do we do if we have an inadvertent whistle?”
Bill says “Well you know what we are supposed to do on inadvertent whistles but c’mon lets not have any inadvertent whistles, you know keep that under control.”
And the guy says “Well Mr Brown, last week I had an inadvertent flag and an inadvertent whistle and the Referee took them both away from me.”
So we knew we were in trouble on this game from the start, Eustis was the name of the official,
Bill says “Well we are not going to take away your flag or your whistle but let’s just try to keep things in control.”
So we go out for the pregame and I was supposed to get the visiting Coach to check in with him and check things and we couldn’t find him, so I finally asked one of the assistants “Where’s the Head Coach?” And he looked around and he goes “Oh here he’s coming.” And here comes this guy in a blue leisure suit with all kinds of spangles and beads and everything. He’s got two Highway patrolmen on each side of him. I said “Are we expecting trouble?” this was a small college game, we are going to have one thousand maybe two thousand people in the stands. And he goes “Oh No, those aren’t Highway patrolmen, they’re the bus drivers, he makes them dress up that way to make him look good.
This game got out of control in a hurry, all they did - North East Mississippi State, was throw the ball to Jerry Rice and it was 50 to nothing at halftime.
So we are going into the fourth quarter and it’s like 72 to 6, it’s just awful. So Bethany College did a sweep around there and the Umpire whose name was Justin was from the other conference threw a flag and he said “Mr Brown I have clipping” and Eustis came running in and said “You don’t have clipping I saw the whole thing, you don’t have clipping.” And he says “I have clipping and I’ve got it right here.” Bill says ”Fellas, just tell me what have we got here?”
Eustis says “You don’t have clipping, pick that flag up, just let it go.”
So the Umpire picks up the flag and he goes over toward Bill and he says “Do you want my flag?”