Sometimes, football referees are inconspicuous. Sure, they make sometimes game-altering calls, but you may not always notice them during regular plays.
The best referee hits, including that time Stephen Garcia got laid out
The football field is a frantic place.
According to Cyd Zeigler, co-founder of SB Nation’s Outsports.com and a trained football referee, refs are trained on how to move to avoid players during games.
But there are a lot of times when refs just find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time on the field in the middle of games. Refs have taken (and sometimes given!) hits, blocks, and tackles quite a bit.
One of the most famous came during a 2008 game.
Former South Carolina quarterback Stephen Garcia got laid out by a ref on a keeper deep in LSU territory:
“Well, I didn’t run into the ref,” Garcia told SB Nation. “He literally tackled me.”
“It was a zone-read,” Garcia said, recalling the play. “So the running back was on the lefthand side. We’re in shotgun. I read the defense, and I pulled it. I’m getting ready to run into the end zone, and this frickin’ guy kinda shuffles and lowers his right shoulder right into me.”
“I’m sitting on my butt, and I look at him — and I can’t really tell you what I told him,” Garcia said.
Luckily, Garcia did tell me what he actually said.
“I was like ‘what the fuck are you doing?’” Garcia said. “I was like ‘what the fuck, this is bullshit! I’m getting ready to run it in!’”
He adds that he remembers one of his teammates having to bring him away from the ref.
“If you look at the play, I think it was Jarriel King, who was our left tackle, and he was like ‘hey G man, calm down, man!’” Garcia said. “I was pretty pissed off because I was getting ready to run it in. There was like a safety or somebody back there that could’ve made the only other tackle, and I probably outweighed him by like 30 pounds, so I wasn’t gonna get stopped on that deal. But this damn — that ref came out of fricking nowhere and fricking drilled me.”
The ref who delivered the hit was Wilbur Hackett Jr.
South Carolina beat Kentucky 24-17 the week before, helped by Garcia’s coach, Steve Spurrier, putting Garcia in off the bench. Garcia refers to “conspiracy theories,” as he calls them, relating to Hackett’s alma mater.
“Maybe that’s why, he had flashbacks and he was pissed off for leading the comeback the week before.”
A few days after the game, both Spurrier and the SEC thought Hackett didn’t do anything wrong, after re-watching the play:
“He was trying to get out of the way,” Spurrier said of Hackett, according to The State in Columbia, S.C. “Stephen sort of cut back right into him. Sometimes that will happen.”
When contacted by ESPN’s Joe Schad, the Southeastern Conference office said after reviewing the play, it believes the umpire was in appropriate position. A spokesman said the umpire raised his arm to defend himself after a change of direction by the runner.
“A lot of people said I was pissed.… that I hit him on purpose, that I should be fired,” Hackett said in 2011. “I had to explain to my supervisor that, on instinct, I protected myself. I couldn’t get out of the way.”
Anyway, let’s look at a bunch of other refs running into football players.
Please appreciate this textbook downhill blocking technique from this ref during a Georgia defensive touchdown against Missouri in 2018:
Ever seen a ref end up at the bottom of a dogpile? During a 2011 Bengals-Raiders game, that’s exactly what happened:
This poor (what looks like) high school referee got his legs taken out from under him on the sideline:
This guy, too:
Look, I’m sure it’s difficult to monitor everything that’s going on while 22 guys are playing at full speed, so it’s easy to see how this happens. This ref impeded Tom Brady in 2013 on a quarterback keeper against the Baltimore Ravens:
During a Steelers-Vikings game in 2009, Minnesota TE Jeffrey Dugan blocked for Percy Harvin on a kick returned for a TD:
Former Jets running back Shonn Greene also ran right through this ref back in 2011 against the Miami Dolphins:
During Georgia’s game against South Carolina in 2018, this ref got in the middle of two Dawg defenders, and it didn’t end well:
Can you say flop?
Oh no, buddy got his legs taken out from under him:
This Texas HS football referee just wiped out and I’m sorry, but this is hilarious:
Thank you for all that you do, refs.
As for Garcia, who is training to play in the spring football league that Spurrier will be coaching in, he and Hackett, made amends later in the 2008 season — kinda.
“I saw him a couple weeks afterwards, and he was like ‘hey, Garcia, that whole thing was like a crazy mix-up, I just wanna let you know I didn’t mean to tackle you.’ And he goes ‘hey, by the way do you know an Evan Cromer, do you remember playing with him?’ I was like ‘yeah, he was my receiver at Jefferson High School.’ And he goes ‘yeah, my daughter knows him over at Eastern Kentucky.
“So I was like ‘man that’s a small world, but again man, but you did tackle me, just so we’re on the same page. You did actually lower your shoulder and tackle me, and it’s bullshit.’ So we got a kick out of it.”
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