| Ed Hochuli Bio |
BIRTHDATE
Dec 25, 1950
HOMETOWN
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
FAMILY
Wife: Brenda; Children: Scott, Heather, Jennie, Shawn, Aaron, Rachel (Range in age from 14-27); Five Grandchildren
EDUCATION
BA, University of Texas at El Paso; JD, University of Arizona
OCCUPATION
Referee, National Football League;
Second Job: Partner in the law firm of Jones, Skelton and Hochuli (specializes in civil litigation).
OFFICIATING HIGHLIGHTS
Referee in Superbowl XXXII, in San Diego between Green Bay and Denver
First NFL game, August 11, 1990 at Lambeau Field (“A great place to start.” Green Bay (a “home game” for this Milwaukee native).
First NFL game as Referee, August, 1992. Denver v. Cincinnati.
HOBBIES
I have no hobbies other than my kids. Officiating is a huge time expense, a time cost; and with that many kids, and I now have five grandkids, there is so much going on all the time. I try to create time for the rest of my life — the kids and my wife, and I spend a lot of time going to their things and trying to include them in my life. | | |
Officiating.com: The NFL officials have an amazing ability to keep their cool in the heat of the action and when players, coaches and fans are yelling the vilest things at them. How do you do it?
Hochuli: I think part of this is that by the time you get to the NFL you’ve been officiating for a long time, and you’ve heard it all. I don’t think it gets much tougher than junior college. You’re concentrating on the game so hard that most of that stuff you don’t even pay attention to anymore.
Officiating.com: Are there key words or phrases that a player can say that will trigger an automatic penalty?
Hochuli: Not from me. We’re required to throw a player out if he intentionally contacts an official. Other than that, I have never penalized a player for saying something in the heat of the moment. This is a violent game played by emotional players, and I am supposed to keep my cool, but my responsibility is to keep them out of trouble. If I let a coach or a player get himself flagged by what he said I have failed in part of my job to keep him from doing that because I’m the one that’s supposed to be cool and level-headed.
Officiating.com: Can you take us through the procedures that are involved when you use the replay cameras and official?
Hochuli: I have a pager on my belt as does the Umpire. It vibrates. You look down at the pager and it says either “home,” “visitor,” or “NFL.” “NFL” would be the booth and the only time that applies is in the last two minutes of the first and second half. When it vibrates, I look down and see which team is responsible. I run over to the coach and ask him what he’s challenging, and he tells me. I then announce it to the field and the crowd, phrasing it in the right lingo, the right terms.
Then I head over to the replay booth. They don’t want us get over there too quickly. They want the replay booth to have time to get things queued up, and they want TV to have time to dump some more replays. Everything we see is what you’ve seen on TV. We get to see as frequently and in whatever order we want to see it, and we get to slow it down and freeze frame it and back it up. But until it has been shown the first time by TV, it never gets into the equipment in the replay booth.
Continued...
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