NFL referee Sarah Thomas doesn’t have time for your nonsense

HOUSTON — Sarah Thomas used to hate referees. They didn’t like her, either. As a highly competitive high school and college basketball player, the Mississippi native would get heated over calls that she disagreed with, though she knew how to butter up the officials when she needed to.

So it’s a little funny that Thomas has gone on to become one of the most visible referees in America: When the NFL hired her in 2015, she became the first female official to call professional football games.

Thomas is sitting ramrod straight at a table in the media center on Thursday of Super Bowl week as she tells me about her career path. She isn’t calling the big game (doing so requires years and years of experience), but she’s there to watch with with her family. Her kids — who she says are such gifted athletes that she wouldn’t be surprised if they go pro someday — are very excited for kickoff.

Thomas stares at me without breaking eye contact as she talks, and it’s slightly unnerving. She’ll answer one questions and then wait for my next one, not giving me any more words than she needs to.

Thomas’ arresting quality — the way she makes you feel like you’re in the presence of an authority not to be messed with — is probably partly why she’s been such a trailblazer. Her job entails making split-second decisions, sticking with them, and then moving on, often despite backlash from players and fans.

Her authority is, of course, earned: She’s been a football referee now for two decades, ever since she happened to call her brother while he was on his way to a seminar about becoming an official.

“We were on the phone one day,” Thomas says in her melodic Southern accent, “and, unbeknownst to me, he was on his way to an officials meeting. And I said, ‘Can girls do that?’ And he was just like, ‘I guess so.’

“So I showed up at this first meeting 20 years ago,” she continues. “I walked in and the gentleman in the front of the room was talking, and then he just stopped. And I said, ‘Is this where you become a football official?’ And he said a few choice words, and then he said, ‘I guess so.’”

Thomas dove in, learning the ins and outs of the game as though it were a foreign language. She became fluent quickly, and reffed high school games for 10 years, then college games for eight, before moving up to work in the biggest professional sports league in America.

I ask Thomas if the narrative of being the first woman ever gets tiring. If she ever wishes people would just talk about her as a referee, rather than a female referee.

“Well, it’s new, and a lot of people want to talk about it,” she says. “Because you sit back, and you think, it was 2015 and there was still a gender barrier that needed to be broken in a major organization.”

But the NFL was right to take their time in hiring a woman, Thomas believes, because she thinks it was important that the first woman they did end up choosing was as highly qualified as any man (it’s worth noting that the NBA hired their first female ref in 1997). And, because Thomas has the chops, she hasn’t felt that she’s been treated any differently because of her gender.

Thomas toes the party line pretty well — she’s teamed up to be Activia’s spokeswoman, and a PR person from the yogurt company is sitting with us in this cavernous space as camera crews, executives, and other shlubby and not-so-shlubby reporters scurry around us. Thomas goes on a fairly long and dutiful tangent about how the company’s campaign on female empowerment speaks to her.

She doesn’t expand as much when I ask her about specific calls she’s had to make, though: “We don’t consider them tough calls or easy calls; there’s just the rules, we’re trained, and we see what we see and we call what we call.”

And Thomas quickly shuts down my question about whether her job gets harder as the game goes on due to decision fatigue: “You call it like you see it from kickoff to the end of the game.”

Nor does Thomas pay attention to whether she has fans: “I have no idea. I would hope women would go ‘Hey, we’re proud of her.’ I’d want them to be a fan of the situation.”

In short, Thomas is exactly what you want in an NFL referee: unflappable, decisive, sure of herself. She’s tough, too; she tells me that the hit she took during the Packers-Vikings game on Christmas Eve didn’t really hurt that much, even though it resulted in two broken bones in her wrist and a surgery. She moves her hand to show me that she’s almost completely healed.

But Thomas is also passionate: When I ask about whether she’s ever recognized while doing her day job as a pharmaceutical sales rep, she opens up a little more about the mental complexities of balancing a career, being a mother, and having to get on a plane most weekends during the NFL season to call games.

“You really learn to compartmentalize,” she says. “But when I land on Sunday, I’m not saying I always shut this job off and go straight to this next one and everything’s peaches and cream, over here.”

And then she tells me something that I would like to get embroidered on a pillow or tattooed on my forearm:

“As women, the way we carry ourselves speaks a lot. Field presence is what they talk about. But you can still be a woman, you can be attractive, and whatever way you carry yourself speaks volumes to the reception. A man may feel as if may he can have his way or whatever, but I just think that when we carry ourselves with confidence, and walk into a room with confidence, the atmosphere kind of changes.”

We’re out of time. Thomas, who’s probably over six feet tall with heels on, stands up and shakes my hand. Her grip is strong. As she walks away, I realize I’ve been holding my breath and I exhale.