Sport: A Lot of Fun

A big-time football official combines the judicial integrity of a Supreme Court Justice with the physical agility of a gymnast; he must be able to keep 22 high-strung and violent athletes from beating one another's brains out; he must be instantly ready to use any one of 24 signals to indicate any of 61 fouls and penalties; he must know the complex rule book of football by heart. As one of the top men in the trade, Referee Paul Swaffield sums it up with a craftsman's pride: "You can't very well be a dummy and be a referee." In exchange for his package of virtues, the good football official gets the reward of an afternoon's exercise, a nice (up to $125) fee and his name in small type at the bottom of the program.

This week in Philadelphia, 56-year-old Referee Swaffield will bind up a game left leg with twelve yards of adhesive tape, then gallop up & down Municipal Stadium for some six miles before 100,000 witnesses who will hardly even notice him. The fans will be watching the Army-Navy game and the four stripe-shirted officials will be just mobile scenery, chiefly worth attention only if they commit bloopers or get knocked down and run over by a power play.

No Accident. Stocky, firm-jawed Referee Swaffield has a reputation for avoiding that sort of attention. A Watertown, Mass, businessman (advertising manager for Hood Rubber Co.) five days a week, Swaffield has spent most of his football-season Saturdays for 24 years learning to be both omnipresent and inconspicuous. He was never a college football star himself, though he did earn baseball and basket letters at Brown ('16) and played enough football to get "the feel" of it. Like his fellow officials, he started with high school and frosh games, graduated in time to the college circuit. This year, for the first time in his career, Swaffield drew the top assignment in the control of the Eastern Intercollegiate Football Association, the Army-Navy game.

The choice of Swaffield, made months in advance, was no accident. After each game, the individual officials and the coaches of the rival teams mail brief reports to the Eastern Association office, rating the officiating as satisfactory or not—and, if not, why not. Too many blunders can bounce the blunderer back to the minors or right off the roster of officials.

No Total Warfare. "The cardinal sin of a football official," says Swaffield, "is to be out of position." At the Army-Navy game, his position will be directly behind the offensive team, where he can watch the play develop and follow it downfield, "on top of it" all the way. Each of the other three officials has his standard starting spot: the umpire behind the defensive line, the head linesman sighting along the line of scrimmage for offside violations, the field judge back of the defensive secondary to watch for kicks, forward-pass plays and downfield interference.

Rule No. 1 for a football official, says Swaffield, "is to make an immediate decision and never take any back talk. You have to act with confidence and calmness. The official who bellows at the boys just makes them antagonistic." Swaffield prefers to kid the players along, make them loosen up and remember that football is just a game, not total warfare.