Each week during the football season, we will interview a different broadcaster. The goal is for readers to gain insight into how NFL and college football broadcasters approach what they do, along with some questions tied to the game they are assigned that week. Our fifth Q&A subject is CBS NFL rules analyst Gene Steratore, a former NFL and NCAA basketball referee who serves as a weekly rules analyst for CBS’ coverage of the NFL and NCAA basketball seasons. Previous weeks have featured Fox’s Greg Olsen, Amazon’s Al Michaels, CBS and Westwood One Audio’s Kevin Harlan, and Fox’s Pam Oliver.
What does your Sunday setup look like?
I work at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City. I have a ref room and studio, which you could imagine has a high number of large television screens. Those screens carry the games that we are broadcasting. I get the luxury of having multiple angles for each game, like the All-22, the broadcast itself, and possibly the ref cam. That’s so I can time when that referee is leaving their headset or iPad (Note: They actually use Microsoft Surface tablets) and beginning to make his announcement so that I’m not talking over him.
There are three major screens that I work off, including a large screen that sits directly in front of me which is where we bring a play in from whichever game we are going live to. The screen in front of me is what I’m looking at regarding a replay or an angle. What I am doing is basically what a replay official is doing with the referee at the game, or what they’re doing at the NFL Command Center.
It all happens rather quickly. You can be sitting for 20-25 minutes and then bam, there’s a replay on a catch or non-catch. Once you make a decision for the viewers that is hopefully clear and concise, you could very easily be onto another replay that just occurred in another game. It is exactly what I loved on the field. It’s somewhat of controlled chaos. You don’t know where the next situation is going, and you need to be prepared to react very quickly.
How are you alerted to a broadcast that will be coming to you?
First and foremost, we have what we call game loggers. They are college-level officials or retired officials, individuals who understand the game from an officiating lens. Each game we have an individual logger who is assigned to that specific game. Someone is watching every game. We also have our own kind of pregame meeting. I’ll go over potentially five topics that I would like them to alert me to as the day progresses. It may be something like roughing the passer plays or maybe some things that really aren’t football reviews but it lets me stay involved in how I see the games being officiated.
Now, let’s say there’s a challenge flag thrown. In my ear, I will hear immediately, “Gene, there is a challenge in Cleveland.” Then my producer (Bryan Kosowski and Jawn Morales rotate as his producer), who sits to the left of me, will start to alert all of those individuals responsible to get us prepared to go on air in Cleveland. My producer would be communicating directly with the production truck in Cleveland letting them know Gene is looking at the play.
Hopefully, within a 35- to 40-second window, I have seen enough to be able to digest things. I alert my producer with a visual cue that I am ready. Then the play-by-play person or analyst brings (me in) and asks what I think on the play. I give my thoughts, and hopefully, there is time to get into a little back-and-forth with the analyst. The referee is usually finalizing his review right at that point. Television is very tight. You want to finish your thought, then a pause, and then the referee makes his formal announcement. There are a lot of moving points behind the scenes and a lot of people who are great at what they do to make this 20-30 seconds seamless.
An NFL referee for 15 years, Gene Steratore was the referee for Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis, his final game in the league. (Simon Bruty / Anychance / Getty Images)
You are still relatively new to television. What is something concrete that would explain your growth as an NFL broadcaster from the first game you did on air to today?
It was getting acclimated to the television portions. You have to be extremely concise and get in as much information as you can get in a very short window of time. Don’t overcomplicate it. Have some real value. There are four to five football games taking place at the same time in a 1 p.m. ET window, and you need to navigate all of the games. You might have input on Kansas City, and then five minutes later you are talking about a game in Pittsburgh. You want to remain relevant for those games and that comes with (the) help of other individuals (at CBS) that are watching that game specifically. You want to gather data so that you’re intimate about each game.
Also, one of the great parts of the job is communicating with people off-air. A good portion of my job, I believe, is to give our color analysts or play-by-play announcers a little more data from this officiating space. I love giving Charles Davis, Tony (Romo), Jay Feely, all of them, a little officiating lingo. If we can share some of that knowledge with our very highly knowledgeable football people, they can fill some officiating into their process, and I think that becomes a better experience for the viewer.
You retired as an NFL official in 2018. How do you stay current with the rulebook?
I almost feel like I’m watching more film and more training tapes now. The NFL has been wonderful in keeping us up to date on the officials’ training tapes that the NFL puts out each week. You are forever in the rulebook. The rulebook isn’t small. No one can digest all 300-plus pages of that. So you are forever continuously navigating the rulebook and playing scenarios in your own mind as to how would you respond if this occurred. I still feel like Monday through Saturday I’m doing a lot of the same type of work I was when I was active on the field. I always look to see which crews are where and which matchups they have. I think about how a game could potentially play out.
Do you have a preference between being in the studio versus being on-site?
Any time we have a one-off week like Thanksgiving or the playoffs and I get that opportunity to be at the stadium, it’s a surreal and wonderful experience. You never forget that drive into an NFL stadium as you did as an official. Being physically in the building, you remember what you felt for all those years and why you loved it so much. I also love the fact that I can see the entire field when I’m on location. It’s more intimate as to how this game is molding as it relates to the officiating part of it. That helps tremendously.
Officials are used to getting constructive criticism. How often do you self-analyze your work as a television rules analyst?
Every week my producer encapsulates all of my hits for the week, and I get that email on a Tuesday. At first, it was very difficult for me to listen to myself. I struggled with it. It made me feel queasy. But I continued to move through it and gain knowledge. “Did I lay out (stop talking) too late here? Was I too wishy-washy at this moment? I could have said this.” I know things better now that I have done hundreds, if not thousands, of TV hits. I think about what I could have done better. That’s growth. I also have now been in enough scenarios where I can feel the rhythm of a producer. I better understand everyone else who is part of the job. And it’s become a little easier to listen to myself.
GO DEEPER
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Previous Q&As
• Greg Olsen: On Tom Brady and his future at Fox, Jordan Love, Justin Fields and more
• Al Michaels: On criticism, dinner with John Madden, working with Kyle Shanahan
• Kevin Harlan: On his Super Bowl streak, his Buck family bond and the speedy Dolphins
• Pam Oliver: On broadcasting longevity, what her job is like, the joy of Eagles fans and more
(Photo of Steratore during Super Bowl LII in February 2018, his final game as an NFL official: Rob Carr / Getty Images)
2023-10-07 12:08:08
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