Legal Super Bowl wagering is expected to shatter records in 2025, with the combination of more sports bettors and a favorable NFL regular season for the public pushing estimates toward the $2 billion plateau.
Officiating in the legal sports betting era has come under considerable scrutiny — and the concerns are sure to amplify after Major League baseball umpire Pat Hoberg was fired Monday for violating the league's sports betting policy. But FOX NFL rules analyst Mike Pereira assured fans that NFL officiating is in no danger of being corrupted, saying that the league addressed concerns of potential improprieties long before the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act was repealed in May 2018.
"I go back to Tim Donaghy and the NBA when he got caught up (in a gambling scandal)," Pereira told Covers in a recent wide-ranging interview. "We all know what happened. And I think it affected every official on every level. That was a big news story. And I remember Roger Goodell coming down to my office. He sat across from me and he said, 'Okay, look. The good news is, it didn’t happen to us. But let’s pretend it did.'
"And so we looked at everything. I mean, we looked at how we hired people, we looked at the background checks we did during the season, we looked at how we gave out assignments. We were giving out assignments for the whole year, so an official could, at the time, get 17 weeks worth of assignments. So if somebody was trying to track an official for their game in Week 12, they could have started three months ahead of time."
Pereira, the former vice-president of officiating for the NFL, and Goodell agreed to reduce the lead time for all assignments to just three weeks ("enough time to figure out their travel," Pereira explained) — and that wasn't the only area of focus moving forward.
NFL conducting "a lot more background checks"
"We did a lot more background checks during the season than we had done before," Pereira told Covers. "People asked us, 'What was part of your process, what was important in hiring people in the NFL?' One of them was (hiring) very successful people in their own right. We allowed attorneys. We had a lot of businessmen that were very successful. Because we didn’t think that even if they were presented with doing something, they certainly wouldn’t risk their full-time occupation. We stayed away from those that were maybe on the edge of financial (issues).
"Even though gambling has become more prevalent, I feel more and more secure that, if I were a gambler (which I’m not), I would feel secure that the safety net that the leagues have put up is going to prevent anything from happening that could have an effect on a game."
The NFL announced last month that veteran official Ron Torbert will be the head referee for Sunday's Super Bowl 59 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. It's Torbert's second Super Bowl assignment.
He'll be joined by side judge Boris Cheek (the only other member of the crew with Super Bowl officiating experience), umpire Mike Norton (who won a super Bowl as a player with the St. Louis Rams in 1999), down judge Max Causey, line judge Mark Stewart, field judge Mearl Robinson, back judge Jonah Monroe and replay official Kevin Brown.
Pereira on Aikman: Officiating needs to improve regardless of betting focus
Pereira also addressed comments made by Football Hall of Famer and ESPN analyst Troy Aikman, who told Sports Illustrated that there's "more at stake" for NFL officials in a widely expanded legal sports betting world, in light of the league becoming "partners with a number of these gambling services."
"With all due respect to Troy, who I’m good friends with, officiating needs to get better, period," Pereira said. "They need to get more calls right whether there’s gambling or not. (Sports betting) does not at all affect the way the game is officiated. It’s more about the trust factor that is not (on) the officials but it is (on) the league to make sure that nothing is going on."
Pereira noted that he hasn't had to deal with many sticky situations involving improprieties from officials – but one incident does stand out to him.
"The only situation I ever had which really infringed on the integrity of the officials, I had an umpire who took his Super Bowl tickets and sold them for over face value. And I literally had to let the man go because we are obviously so concerned about the integrity of the game.
"So I can say that the way that (officials) approach the game, to me, is not a lot different than it was when I was officiating in the late 90s. It’s just that (sports betting) is a lot more prolific now, and it gets a lot more discussion, and more people are involved. But it really doesn’t have an effect on how they officiate on the field."
