Zebra Chief. That’s the name of the boat presented to Art McNally honoring him for decades of service to the National Football League. Paid for by officials who worked with and for McNally, and affectionately named after him, that gift in part explains McNally’s impact on pro football and those with whom he has dealt.
You can learn a lot about Art McNally from one story, circa 1948. McNally was a 23-year-old Temple University freshman, majoring in health and physical education. In a typical first-day-of-class ice-breaking effort, a professor asked each new student’s career goals. “Coach” and “teacher” were the responses until McNally’s turn.
“I want to officiate football, baseball and basketball on a collegiate, possibly a professional level,” said the confident former U.S. Marine.
“Everyone just laughed,” he recalls, admitting that made him mad, so he continued. “I’ve never been in Madison Square Garden, but some day I’m going to walk in there with a bag in my hand and I’m going to work a ball game.” The class laughed even harder.
“Ten years later I worked a college football game at Muhlenberg (Pa.). It was a 1:30 kickoff. When the game was over, I showered and jumped into the car with my wife, drove to New York and I worked the New York Knicks–College All-Stars basketball game.”
The lessons are clear. Even as a college freshman, McNally was determined to have an officiating career. And he set goals, then achieved them.
The Early Years
Art McNally’s interest in officiating began in high school. Although he played some football (an “erratic” center), he was “not quick enough on my feet” to play basketball. Still, he was a regular observer at the high school team’s practice sessions. By his senior year he was on the floor as the referee.
There was no strong sports background in the McNally family. His father, a fireman, was “not an athlete.” But something about competition drew Art’s interest. His mother would later characterize him as a boy who’d do “anything for sports. A fierce competitor with a wicked temper.”
“I had a tough temper,” McNally admits. “I’d fight at the drop of a hat when I was in high school. Fist fights. It usually happened when something went the wrong way in a game.”
He graduated in 1943, joined the Marine Corps and served during World War II. Along the way, he played Marine Corps baseball and worked military baseball and basketball games.
After the war, McNally drifted briefly before finding his direction again. In 1948, he stopped wandering, enrolled at Temple University and married Rita, a girl he’d known since high school. Together they developed a straightforward plan: earn a degree, secure a job that allowed afternoons free, and chase the dream of professional officiating.
“I officiated all three sports while I was in school,” he remembers. “Any level. I worked literally hundreds of games.”
Rita often traveled with him. “Before we began having our family, she would travel all over the Philadelphia area in all three sports regardless of the amount of time.”
McNally graduated in 1950, just as the Korean War began and minor league baseball contracted sharply. His chance at pro baseball vanished overnight.
Teaching, Travel and Tough Lessons
McNally turned to teaching full time at Philadelphia’s Central High School, officiating every football, basketball and baseball game he could find.
“In one year I worked 269 games. Anything and everything coming down the pike,” he says. “That’s why I’ve turned down opportunities to play golf. If I got into golf, I’d never be home.”
In 1954 he got his first collegiate basketball break. Football and baseball followed. As his experience grew, so did his control.
“I learned that you can’t have a temper on the floor. No matter how emotional the players or coaches get, it can’t be me.”
In 1957, he joined the NBA as a part-time official while continuing to teach. Travel was brutal. Classes by day, flights by afternoon, games by night, overnight train rides home, then back to school the next morning.
A slippery floor injury during a Celtics–Lakers game in 1958 shook his confidence. Though brief, that experience ended his NBA career after one season. College officiating continued without interruption.
The NFL Opportunity
In 1959, McNally received a call from NFL supervisor Mike Wilson. McNally hadn’t even applied.
“I didn’t even know what the NFL was. I’d never seen a pro football game.”
Hesitant at first, he listened to friends who urged him to take the chance. That year, Art McNally worked his first NFL game as a field judge.
The NFL schedule fit teaching life better. One game a week, mostly weekends. In his second season he was promoted to referee, a rapid rise even by historical standards.
“My philosophy from a very early stage was simple,” he says. “The players were the most important people on the field. If one player gained an advantage over another, it was going to be called. With that philosophy, intimidation didn’t matter.”
A Showdown With Lombardi
The defining moment of McNally’s on-field career came in 1965. Green Bay needed a win to clinch the championship. A loose ball on a pitchout was returned 60 yards for what appeared to be a touchdown.
McNally ruled it a grounded lateral.
“I walked into the huddle and told Bart Starr, ‘You don’t have a touchdown.’ He pointed to the sideline and said, ‘Go tell the man.’ The man was Vince Lombardi.”
Lombardi erupted. McNally waited, then calmly repeated the ruling and walked away.
Green Bay lost. The decision forced a playoff and cost McNally a postseason assignment. Years later, as supervisor, he changed how playoff officials were selected to prevent a single call from ending a season.
Becoming the Zebra Chief
After the 1967 season, McNally was approached to join the NFL officiating office full time. The NFL-AFL merger was coming. The league needed leadership from someone who understood officials.
McNally hesitated, requested a leave of absence from teaching, and made the leap.
Five years later, he was promoted to supervisor of officials. He revolutionized evaluation, introduced systematic video review and helped professionalize officiating at every level.
By the early 1980s, McNally was a fixture in the league. Then tragedy struck. After 33 years of marriage, Rita died of skin cancer in 1981.
McNally buried himself in work, eventually finding happiness again when he met Sharon while serving jury duty. They married in 1986.
“She knows the game,” he says. “If I’m away, she’ll be watching and tell me, ‘You might have a problem in Buffalo.’”
Legacy
It’s hard to imagine pro football without the innovations that occurred during McNally’s reign. Among them: seven-man crews, instant replay, referees’ microphones.
The officials on staff have seen even greater impact: game-by-game review of every call; objective and subjective grading of season-long performances (first suggested by Cowboys GM Tex Schramm); improved rule clinics, including by-position breakout meetings for mechanics and special concerns; and a mandatory “diary” system in which each official records every call made during the season.
The goal: to help identify trends and problem areas in an official’s game.
But McNally’s record does include controversy. He was accused by former NFL referee Fred Swearingen of caving in to Dallas’ pressure and conspiring to eliminate the 21-year veteran from the NFL staff.
Other complaints: that McNally would routinely withhold evidence that an official’s controversial judgment call was correct, even when the official was under tremendous public pressure; and that results of the NFL grading system, based on videotape review by multiple evaluators, were often influenced more by reviewer perception than actual performance.
Exclusively for this story, McNally responded to those accusations. Citing pending litigation, he declined to comment on Ben Dreith’s recent age-bias lawsuit against the NFL.
Media Policy
“By NFL constitution you don’t talk about anything, direct or indirect, as far as criticism of officials. I always wanted to be honest with anybody I talked to, and the only way I could respond would be: ‘When you ask a question about rules, if we’d miss a rule I’d tell you.
But if it’s about judgment, I won’t comment publicly.’ That’s because if you tell them the judgment call was correct this Sunday, then next Monday they could come back and say, ‘Okay, smart guy. How about this one?’”
Officials’ Grading System
“In all the years we’ve done this I’ve constantly asked the officials, in every clinic, ‘If you have anything you think is better, we’ll take it.’ There’s only been one year when we made an adjustment.
The officials suggested that if you make a call that is correct you should simply get credit for it — right or wrong. We tried it. It was a total, abject failure. You can’t say that a delay-of-game flag deserves the same credit as a gutsy pass-interference call in a key moment.”
The NFL will never publicly discuss an official’s departure from the league. When the league decides it’s time for an official to move on, he is offered the chance to write a letter of resignation. If he declines, the supervisor informs him his contract will not be renewed. The goal is to allow an official to “save face” during a difficult transition — a policy McNally strongly supports.
“I would not want Commissioner Tagliabue to be in a position where he’d call me in and ask when I would go,” McNally says. “I’ve had to tell enough people, in effect, ‘Your career is going to be over.’ I wanted to go out with that kind of class.”
McNally’s retirement plans would exhaust a much younger man. During the current NFL season, he has served as a special consultant, helping first-year director of officiating Jerry Seeman with the transition.
Personally, McNally finally bought a set of golf clubs (though he says he’ll only play if Sharon agrees), purchased a 23-foot Sundowner power boat (after already being gifted Zebra Chief), and is giving serious thought to writing a book.
After a lifetime devoted to officiating, McNally leaves behind a legacy that continues to shape the profession.
“Officiating has obviously been my life,” he says. “It’s presented problems, but problems don’t mean anything if you like what you’re doing.”
Written by Scott Ehret, Referee associate editor.
