Gene Steratore is no stranger to being at the center of a controversy. The longtime NFL referee was the official who overturned Calvin Johnson’s touchdown-turned-incomplete-pass in 2010 as well as the Did-Dez Bryant-catch-it play in the 2015 divisional matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers. Steratore was also the referee who ruled that Philadelphia Eagles tight end Zach Ertz’s go-ahead touchdown catch was indeed a catch in Super Bowl LII last February.

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After 15 years as an NFL game official, Steratore has traded his stripes for a studio job. Starting this fall, he will work as a CBS Sports rules analyst for coverage of The NFL on CBS and college basketball, including next year’s Super Bowl and NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.

“It is particularly important because it is a Super Bowl year for us and going to a Super Bowl without a rules analyst probably was not a good idea,” said CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus. “I think Gene has the personality, presence and credibility to be a really important member of CBS Sports.”

In an interview with The Athletic this week, Steratore addressed the reasons why he took the CBS job as well as the criticism that will inevitably come his way.

“The way am looking at this new venture is the way I have looked at my officiating career,” Steratore said. “There will be opportunities of reacting in real time and you hope you are on point with all the things you are speaking to and communicating about. Hopefully, I can word it and phrase it in a way that adds credibility to what the interpretation or analysis will be.

“I was the official who ruled on Calvin Johnson’s catch and five years later it was the Dez Bryant catch and then the irony is the last replay decision of my on-field career was the Zach Ertz touchdown. Three different plays, two decisions one way and one a different way on a subjective type of a play. More important than anything else, this job will be to educate the country that has a thirst for knowing a little more about what these guys do to prepare for these games, and to expose a little of the work and effort and the talent to do this.”

CBS Sports had a rocky run with its previous NFL rules analyst, Mike Carey, who was hired in 2014 but lasted just one season in the booth after facing an avalanche of social media criticism for his inability to correctly predict how the officials on the field were going to rule.  

“I think people made the mistake that Mike’s job was to predict what the official on the field was going to rule, and his job really was to give his opinion and his interpretation of the rules with respect to a specific play,” said McManus. “When he disagreed a number of times with the officials, I think he was unfairly maligned on social media and it became a running theme. It was a shame and I think it hurt his ability to be considered an expert in this area, which I don’t think was fair.”

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(There is some truth here, per USA Today which tracked Carey’s results.) 

One area where Steratore can help himself avoid getting Carey’d is by making himself available via social media to humanize the rules analyst position. This is what Fox Sports rules analyst Mike Pereira has done very well in addition to being excellent on the air. He often answers viewers’ questions on his social media feed.

“I am not averse to social media,” Steratore said. “You do stay kind of quiet when you are wearing stripes four or five days a week. But I definitely think it is something that should be considered because there may be a platform to answer some of those educated questions.”

Steratore entered the NFL as a field judge in 2003 and was promoted to referee in 2006. He worked 12 playoff games, including Super Bowl LII. In basketball, he started officiating Division I Men’s Basketball in 1997 and worked numerous conference and NCAA Tournament games

Over the past couple of years, Steratore said that he had been speaking informally with CBS NFL production people whenever the network aired one of Steratore’s games. “It was something we casually talked about possibly happening in the future,” Steratore said.

“That was the extent of it the last two or three years because I still felt I had a pretty good officiating career left.”

The process accelerated over the last five weeks. Steratore was in New York City at a Big Ten Basketball mentoring retreat and took some time to meet with McManus and other CBS Sports executives. He told McManus he was planning to retire, and McManus and CBS officials asked Steratore over a couple of hours if he has aspirations to work in television. Steratore hired a broadcasting agent from the Montag Group and things proceeded quickly.

“Sometimes the situation lines up,” Steratore said.  “I’m 55 years old and my hope is I have an extended period of time with this new endeavor. It was a difficult decision, but this is an exciting time and it is a great opportunity.”

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CBS said Steratore will be in the studio during the regular season to monitor the 1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. kickoffs. He will be on site for CBS’s Thanksgiving Day broadcast as well as the postseason.

McManus told The Athletic the NFL did not have any influence or say in the hire.

“Our approach with him was if you are ready to retire, we would like to have a conversation with you,” McManus said. “The league did not weigh in.”

The Ink Report

1. In keeping with the theme of hiring rules analysts for an NFL broadcast, NBC announced Tuesday that former NFL official Terry McAulay had been hired as an on-air rules analyst for Sunday Night Football, Football Night in America, and Notre Dame Football. The network said McAulay will be on-site at Sunday Night Football and Notre Dame Football, moving between the broadcast booth during the game and the studio set for pre-game and halftime shows. McAulay was a referee for the last 17 of his 20 NFL seasons (1998-2017) and led the officiating crew in three Super Bowls (XXXIX, XLIII, and XLVIII). He has been the American Athletic Conference’s coordinator of football officiating since 2008.

Asked by The Athletic if the NFL dictated the McAulay hired — the league clearly would like to see officiating not be as much as an issue with its television viewers — Sunday Night Football executive producer Fred Gaudelli said, “No one from the league has ever contacted me about adding a referee. It has never happened.”

2. Fox Sports PR sent over the top television markets for the World Cup through Wednesday. Washington D.C. leads all U.S. markets with a 3.0 share. The full list:

City: Household Rating/Share

3. In the Monday media column for The Athletic, ESPN host Adnan Virk offered great detail about how a contract negotiation happens at ESPN. This is something that is rarely talked about by front-facing sports broadcasting talent. The first rule of sports television contracts? No one talks about sports television contracts.

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“If ESPN does not retain you they generally let you know within 90 days (of your contract concluding),” explained Virk, the host of “Baseball Tonight,” “College Football Final” and many other ESPN properties. “So if I got a call February 1, I knew I was probably done. Now, that is not official and I don’t know that they do that for everybody, but I had heard they would try to give you a heads up. If the contract is not renewed, you don’t get a severance package. There is no two weeks pay. No bonuses. That’s it. When you are done, you are done.”

Here’s the rest of the piece.

4. The on-court rivalry of Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal is getting the documentary treatment next month as the Tennis Channel debuts “Strokes of Genius” on July 1 at 8 p.m. ET. It is the first full-length original feature to air on the Tennis Channel and it’s a very good one (I watched it last week). The film, based on the book “Strokes of Genius” by SI’s Jon Wertheim (who is producer on the film and my longtime colleague at SI), examines Federer and Nadal through the prism of their 2008 finals match at Wimbledon, which many believe is the greatest match of all time. The filmmakers have sitdowns with Federer, Nadal, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras as well as Federer’s parents Robert and Lynette, Nadal’s uncle Toni and sister Maria Isabel, and match chair umpire Pascal Maria. The editing of the film is particularly strong and tennis fans will appreciate some of the rare angles of the epic match. It’s an overtly positive piece —Federer’s agent Tony Godsick served as consulting producer, as did Nadal’s agent Carlos Costa and publicist Benito Perez-Barbadillo — but still worth watching for the beauty and background of one of tennis’s seismic moments.

The film will also air on The CW Network July 3, at 8 p.m. ET and have repeated airings on The Tennis Channel. Here’s a trailer.

4a. For diehard tennis fans, ESPN said that every match from Wimbledon – more than 500 matches – will be available between ESPN3, the new ESPN+, and on the ESPN app. ESPN and ESPN remain the principal linear television home of the coverage. The entire schedule is here.

5. Fox made official on Tuesday its partnership with WWE. As part of a new five-year deal, “WWE SmackDown” live will air each Friday night beginning October 4, 2019, The two-hour live show previously aired on Tuesday nights on the USA Network. “Monday Night Raw” will remain on USA Network as part of a five-year extension for that programming.

5a. NBA TV will air 21 hours of coverage dedicated to the free agency period starting today through July 6. The network will feature an expanded slate of live studio telecasts including daily editions of “Free Agent Fever,” a live studio show.

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5b. Enjoy South Korea knocking out Germany on the Korean Broadcasting System:

South Korea knocking out Germany in Korean Commentary is gold #Worldcup #KORGER pic.twitter.com/jDdSsevrZ1

— ° (@ERNESTHDGAMER) June 27, 2018

(Top photo: Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

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