Lance Pugmire of the Los Angeles Times reports that the NFL has announced its officiating crew for Super Bowl XLIII. The referee will be Terry McAulay, who also served as the referee of Super Bowl XXXIX, between the Eagles and the Patriots. Per the report, McAulay beat out Walt Anderson and Bill Carrollo for the honor. Anderson will work the NFC Championship, and Carrollo draws the AFC title game assignment. As NFL spokesman Greg Aiello explained it to us a couple of weeks ago, the best overall crews handle the wild-card and divisional playoffs. For the championship round and Super Bowl, crews are assembled based on the individual officials who graded out the highest at their positions over the year. The rest of the crew includes umpire Roy Ellison, head linesman Derick Bowers, line judge Mark Perlman, back judge Keith Ferguson, side judge Michael Banks, and field judge Greg Gautreaux. McAulay’s crew handled last Saturday’s division-round playoff between the Ravens and the Titans. The game included two controversial calls -- a highly-publicized failure to call a delay of game penalty against the Ravens during the game-winning drive, and a not-so-highly-publicized failure to realize that Titans running back Chris Johnson had not gotten the ball completely out of the end zone when his knee struck, which should have resulted in a safety for the Ravens.
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up