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The She-Zebra

Will Erin Meehan be the first female ref in the NFL?

By Michael J. Mooney 

If you're watching a football game and start complaining about one of the referees' calls and the petite woman sitting next to you at the bar says you're wrong, simmer down. If she's Erin Meehan, you probably are wrong.

When it comes to the finer details of football — say, the difference between "illegal hands to the face" and "face masking" — Meehan knows her stuff. She should: Meehan, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, is one of few women referees in the game. The 37-year-old spends nights and weekends in zebra duds on a football field in Broward or Miami-Dade, calling games for every level of play, from youth league to semiprofessional. She aims to make it to the National Football League as its first female referee.

"From August to December, I have no life outside football," she says. "When the Super Bowl comes every year, I'm in mourning because I know it will be so long before the season starts back up."

Meehan has been around football since before she could blow a whistle. Her father is a legendary high school football coach in Greenwood Village, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Jack Meehan coached the Cherry Creek High School Bruins for more than 30 years and was the school's athletic director for 14 more. Sports Illustrated recently ranked Cherry Creek fifth on its list of the nation's best high school athletic programs. Erin and her sister Kate, who is four years younger, were often at their father's side.

"Erin was always a gym rat, even in her early years," Jack says. "She used to come to practice and to all the weight-training workouts. She just loved it."

Erin would watch her father's players drill. She paid close attention during games. She soaked in the atmosphere of football, the smell of popcorn on Friday nights in the fall, the glare of stadium lights, the echoes of a PA system. She discovered the nuances of a great play and the camaraderie of the football community. And, says Jack, "She was also very good at teaching my quarterbacks how to play jacks."

As Erin grew up, she always seemed to be involved in one sport or another — volleyball, basketball, soccer, softball, track, diving. In high school, she didn't have as much time to hang out at her father's practices, but she talked with him over dinner, typical daddy-daughter conversations about pass interference, intentional grounding, and the wishbone offense. She took the field herself in college when she played for the Tri-Delt intramural team at Arizona State University. The sorority sisters played flag football — no pads, no helmets, no tackling — but she ran down the field with the ball just the same, dodging and weaving past defenders.

After graduating from ASU with a business degree, Erin moved to Clearwater, Florida, in 1999. She became an avid fantasy football player. Guys at work who joined football pools frequently asked her for advice — "you know, they don't know the game that well, but they join for social reasons," Erin says. But she missed being closer to the game. So she thought about officiating. She knew the game well enough, she figured. "I just said, 'You know what, this would be really cool.' So I called my dad and asked how to get started."

Jack put her in touch with officials in Florida. "She really involved herself in Clearwater," he says. "She becomes very fixed on a goal."

Meehan took an officiating class and scored exceptionally well. By the end of the year, she was an alternate on crews doing youth league games. In 2000, she moved across the state and got a regular schedule calling youth league games in Miami.

Football referees are essentially free agents, though they work in teams. So one official can call a youth league game on Tuesday, a high school game on Friday, and a college game on Saturday, with a different crew for each game. A typical football officiating team consists of a referee, a head linesman, a line judge, an umpire, a back judge, a side judge, a field judge, and a timekeeper. The referee is in charge of the crew. That position is often called a "white hat" because the head referee always wears a white cap while the other officials wear black.

Meehan worked her way up the ranks of officiating teams. From the youth leagues, she began officiating middle school and high school games. Then she moved on to the semipro circuit, which is often played in the spring. "It's all about the number of snaps," she says. "The more you're on the field, the further [in your career as an official] you get."

This year she began calling games in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Meehan is not the only woman officiating in the MEAC. Two others have full schedules working football games. Sarah Thomas, a pharmaceutical saleswoman from Mississippi, became the first female official in Conference USA last fall. Thomas had worked high school games for 11 years before the callup.

But Meehan doesn't want to stop working youth league games. "You gotta teach them the rules when they're young," she laughs.

Meehan says she hasn't experienced any explicit chauvinism from coaches, players, or fellow officials. "I've been really lucky that way."

The biggest obstacle she faces, her father says, is her height. Because most football players are tall (and linemen are tall and wide), some crew positions make it difficult to see everything on the field. And staying out of the way can be a challenge too. "I told her: 'At five-foot-three, do not be an umpire. That would not be conducive to your health,'" Jack says.

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