Refs That were Football Famous Prior

We discuss some of the more famous people that went on to become football officials, and some pretty darn good ones at that. The stories and games they worked are really some great football history.

The third team that is on the football field often does not get the credit they deserve. Sure they have a job that often makes them the bad guys on the field as calls that they make to create a level playing field may go against your favorite team. What we may not know or appreciate is that throughout the history of the game, there have been some very popular officials working big games. Here are some of their stories.

In early football during the 19th-Century it was common that opposing teams would invite a player of a neutral team, generally, that non-participating team’s former captain, to do the honor of officiating games. Author/Historian Parke H. Davis in his 1911 book, Foot Ball the American Intercollegiate Game lists many instances where stars of the era such as Yale’s Pa Corbin, Princeton’s Alex Moffat, C. M. Hollister of Penn, or Herbert Alward of Harvard would participate as the referee of contests. There are countless other accounts as well of former big-name players acting as the head official for games.

An early Umpire and Referee tandem that worked

Matthew McClung is an interesting figure in early football officiating. McClung participated in Lehigh University’s football and baseball teams. He served as captain of the gridiron squad in 1892 and is credited with turning it into one of the school's best-ever football squads. McClung graduated from Lehigh in 1893 with a couple of degrees geared toward the mining industry.
After graduation, McClung accepted a position as the head coach of the Naval Academy football team. He served in this capacity for just one season, leading the team to a 5-2 record. McClung switched gears the following the season, as he began a career as a college football referee which would span twelve years. 
Matthew actually began officiating football as early as November 1895, when he partnered with Paul J. Dashiell to officiate a game between Yale and Princeton. The two had met before as Dashiell played college football at Johns Hopkins University and later at Lehigh University, and, in 1893, assisted Josh Hartwell in coaching football at Navy just a year prior to McClung's year with the Midshipmen.
 The pairing with Dashiell as a Ref/Ump tandem quickly became a regular thing, with McClung acting as referee and Dashiell as Umpire. In a Wikipedia article, it states that Former Princeton guard William "Big Bill" Edwards stated that "within my recollection, for many years the two most prominent, as well as most efficient officials, whose names were always coupled, were McClung, Referee, and Dashiell, Umpire. No two better officials ever worked together and there is as much necessity for teamwork in officiating as there is in playing". Edwards' opinion was often shared by sportswriters and fellow players. After the Yale-Princeton game, a writer for the New York Tribune stated that Dashiell and McClung were "excellent" at their jobs and "that their rulings were just and impartial was admitted everywhere".

This pairing of McClung and Dashiell was widely respected. Quite often they were the names of choice to officiate the traditionally biggest games of the era such as Harvard-Yale, Penn-Harvard, and Cornell-Penn. In 1900 they were even summoned to the West Coast for the Big Cal vs Stanford contest that year. The San Francisco Call newspaper even referred to the duo as the ”two most expert officials in America.” It was quite an honor to be beckoned West 2000 miles but it does not appear that they made the trip.

Eckie

Walter Eckersall was a star on some of Amos Alonzo Stagg’s University of Chicago teams. He was quite a good player too before that. Eckersall led Hyde Park High School to an undefeated season and many recognize that scholastic team as the unofficial national high school football champion in 1903. Walter later guided Stagg’s Maroons to the 1905 National Championship. He was so good that a young fellow by the name of Knute Rockne idolized Eckersall to the point that it got Rockne interested in participating in the game as a youngster. According to an article on 5thdowncfb.com, Rockne stated, “ "The first time I learned a football was not only something to kick, but something to think with, was when I saw a great football player in action for the first time.”
The National Football Foundation shares a story of these two meeting up a few seasons later after Rockne became the head coach at Notre Dame. When Coach had discovered Eckersall was slated to officiate one of his team’s games in Chicago he was pretty much stoked. "I've been waiting years for this," Rockne said to Eckersall. "For what?" Eckersall wanted to know. "To shake your hand.", Rockne blurted, quick to relay his memories of that high school all-star game so many years before. "Stop! Stop!, Eckersall interrupted, "Or Notre Dame will be penalized five yards for speech-making." Rockne loved to retell that story to anyone who would listen. Many claim that the press that Eckersall received as a player, the ones that Rockne enjoyed so much as a youngster, helped Knute later in life realize the importance of getting good press for a football program.

Eckersall was so well respected as an official that he was selected to be the Athletic Officials Association’s first president in 1917. Besides being one of the founders of the AOA, he was an outstanding official, working as referee for the 1916 Rose Bowl. Eckersall also presided over the epic 1927 game between titans Notre Dame and Southern Cal, played in Soldier Field before an estimated 120,000 fans. He is forever noted as one of the game’s most respected game officials and is not only in the AOA Hall of Fame as a Ref but is in the College Football Hall of Fame as a player too. A stadium in the Southside of Chicago still bears his name to this day in his honor.

Fair and Impartial to all

University of Michigan had a halfback/quarterback in 1913 named Tommy Hughitt. Hughitt would go into coaching after leaving Michigan. He served in the position of head coach at the University of Maine in 1915 and 1916 leading the school to a ste title in 1915. After that he  signed on with the Youngstown Patricians of the mythical Ohio League, turning professional as a player-coach. When the Patricians ceased operations due to the World War I and the Spanish flu of 1918, the youngster started playing again at first as a semi-pro with the Buffalo Niagaras, Buffalo Prospects and later in the APFA with the Buffalo All-Americans.

He bounced around coaching and even doing some spot officiating gigs. Hughitt would later become an official in the All-American Football Conference and made quite an impression on some of the folks in that arena. Cleveland Browns great Marion Motley in the PFRA’s Coffin Corner was once quoted as saying to historian Myron Cope: “When [Hughitt] caught a guy stepping on us, he wouldn’t tell him nothing. He’d just pick up the ball and start walking off fifteen yards. They’d ask him why, and then he’d say, ‘For stepping on that man.’ The other referees saw what this ref was doing, and they looked around and saw that we were bringing in the crowds as well as the white guys, so they started to protect us.” This was of course in reference to Motley being one of the first black players to take the field prefessionally after World War II and the unfairness they would receive. Hughitt though despite the color of a player set an example for others to follow to provide a safe, fair, and level playing field for all to play on.

Big Bill takes control

"Big Bill" Edwards, was a star at Princeton in the 19th-century. There is a story from a PFRA Coffin Corner Magazine article titled Blondy Wallace and the Biggest Football Scandal Ever: 1906 where Edwards had been brought in from New York to officiate the first Canton/Massillon game of 1906. Reports state that there never was a doubt about who was in charge during that game. At one point, Canton’s player/coach Blondy Wallace sent in a 215- pound
substitute with a water bucket to relay information to the players on the field. This was illegal back in that era as communication from the coach or anyone on the sideline for that matter violated the rules of the day. It also peaked the ire of the very impartial and fair Mr. Edwards too as Big Bill grabbed therelaying substitute by the neck and threw him "ten yards across the sideline, water-bucket, dipper, and all." Probably not a good move to do in today’s game, but the move then instilled the respect for the game official of both rough and tumble teams.

And many others in conclusion

There are so many other stories of gridiron celebs be named as thegame official. Even famed columnist Irv Kupcinet served as an official during Bears games in the '40s while writing about the team for the Chicago Times. Maybe a slight conflict of interest, but hey that is the way it was in those days.
Others such as University of Chicago star player George Barnell went from the wearing pads to officiating and was a pretty good one too.

One of the biggest questions is about the recent NFL official who was built like a battleship, Ed Hochuli. Being in that good of shape for all of those years surely he had to have been a player once upon a time. The fact is that he did play for the University of Texas at El Paso or UTEP as it is more famously known today. With four seasons of varsity ball, Hochuli continued to work out and used his guns to signal to the press box at NFL games for 27 years. He was known for speaking in everyday terms to explain rulings from the field to national audiences.

The banner photo is from Wikimedia Commons as Matthew McClung refereeing a game for Harvard in 1916 from the source of the book Football Days, by "Big Bill" Edwards

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