It’s a scene that has become familiar over the past several years as March bleeds into April and college basketball takes its customary, ever-so-brief place at the center of the national sports landscape.
In the final minutes of a closely contested game, a whistle blows, a decisive call is made and the referees gather around a courtside monitor. As they do that, the broadcasters bring in a rules expert to explain the proceedings to the millions of puzzled, anxious fans across the country watching from their couches.
A voice makes its way on the air and a picture identifying the analyst appears on the screen, and it’s ... NFL referee Gene Steratore? Dissecting a college basketball game?
It’s true. While best known for his work officiating in the NFL, Steratore has always been more than that. And in the NCAA tournament, he gets perhaps his biggest platform to show it.
Steratore, a Western Pennsylvania native, is in his third season (and his second NCAA tournament) working as a rules analyst for CBS, a role that requires him to drop in on games to provide viewers with an informed perspective on a close or notable call. It’s a position he’s well-suited for, having worked as a Division I college basketball official for 22 years.
That, of course, doesn’t avoid confusion from viewers, many of whom are collectively reminded annually that, yes, Steratore refereed more than one sport. If anything, it’s a testament to the remarkable oddity he became over the course of his career, a renaissance man in various white-and-black striped shirts.
“Look, when you’re an official for 40 years, you’re used to public criticism, so you don’t take any of those things critically, but when you do see, ‘What, are they getting a two-for-one? What’s the NFL guy doing on the college basketball game?’ I take that in all sincerity as kind of a compliment,” Steratore said. “That means I refereed thousands of basketball games and was never really recognized for doing it. The ultimate compliment from an officiating window is that they didn’t really recognize you when the games were playing. A lot of times, I use that as my confirmation that I was at least good enough that I didn’t mess that many games up where they kept remembering my name every night.”
Much of Steratore’s fame is derived from the NFL, a league so popular and omnipresent that even its officials become recognizable figures. While Steratore doesn’t have the same cache as, say, Ed Hochuli and his famous biceps, he was one of the sport’s most prominent referees in his 15 years working games at that level, a status achieved through acts like using an index card to determine whether the tip of the ball met the pole at the end of the first-down chain or refereeing Super Bowl LII.
“You kind of become that to a lot of people,” Steratore said. “That’s what they identify you with.”
Long before he reached the NFL, though, Steratore officiated college basketball.
He oversaw games at the Division I level for more than two decades, making him just one of two NFL officials during his time to go across both sports (with Bill Vinovich being the other). The product of a refereeing family — his father, Gene Sr., was a college basketball and football official while his brother, Tony, has been an NFL official since 1999 — Steratore developed a strong connection to college basketball. He refereed games in the Big East tournament, standing on the same court as the likes of Jim Boeheim and Rick Pitino. He fondly recalls interactions with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, who Steratore said is “like a football coach in a basketball arena,” and Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan. Though the transient nature of college basketball didn’t allow him to develop the same relationships with players that he did with coaches, Steratore established a rapport with current Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green when he was a standout at Michigan State.
“I probably let them get away with a lot more stuff than most basketball guys would,” Steratore said. “Maybe it’s because on the football field, you could scream at me and it didn’t bother me. But everyone didn’t know who you were because we were on the field. When you’re in that condensed environment of the court, those conversations, everyone is pretty much open to them. I never felt personally offended by them. I enjoyed them.”
In 2018, worn down by all those long days on the road between the two sports, Steratore retired from officiating at just 55 years old. Shortly after that, though, a new path presented itself when CBS offered him a position as a rules analyst for the NFL and college basketball.
Such roles on game broadcasts have become commonplace over the past decade, as fans, among many others, struggle with concepts like what qualifies as a catch in football and whether a foul is a Flagrant 1 or a Flagrant 2 in basketball. In Steratore, the ideal traits for such a position are embodied, with years of experience informing his analysis and an affable, gregarious personality that can engage a viewer and make his words more than a recitation of an inscrutable rulebook.
On the basketball side, his set of skills becomes most valuable in March and early April. He travels from his home in Washington, Pa., to CBS’ New York broadcast center, where he will be for days in which NCAA tournament games are being played. Inside a studio, there are loggers watching each of the games. If at any point the officials are walking to the scorers’ table, Steratore will be told through an earpiece that they may need him on a particular game and will get a brief rundown of the situation before watching several slow-motion replays.
“I still get that same rush of the unexpected, which is what officiating is all about, right?” Steratore said. “You prepare yourself for a completely non-scripted athletic event. You’re going to have to make some really quick, split-second decisions. You’d better be pretty darn efficient and accurate in what you’re doing when that time shows up. You can sit here and watch three games in basketball and never go on and then in that last 10 seconds, it’s, ‘Hey, could you please tell us what’s happening? It could be game-deciding.’”
Though replay helps tremendously, some calls are still trickier than others to assess in real time, particularly whether a foul is a block or a charge, a constant point of contention in college basketball, a sport in which referees are often viewed as charge-happy. Is the defensive player retreating? Were they sliding? Was there enough contact to justify any kind of a foul call?
He’s all-too-familiar with the nature of the job. While the game slows down to an official after years with a whistle around one’s neck, it’s still an extremely demanding, fast-paced profession. With CBS, Steratore is thrust into what could seem like a balancing act — measuring his duty to the viewer to be as honest as possible against being sensitive to the rigors of his former occupation. He’s there not only to explain rules, but the process that goes into interpreting them, something he hopes can humanize figures who are typically little more than zebra-striped punching bags.
“In those moments, I get an opportunity to maybe take a confusing situation and narrow down what can be complicated language of some of this,” Steratore said. “I get to pull it down enough for that casual viewer to understand, ‘Oh my goodness, now I know what that means. It piqued my interest a little more in the game and now I’ve become someone that actually likes the game more than I did before I started watching this one.’ Maybe that happens every once in a while. I think it’s just that. They’ve provided me with an opportunity to speak to the world about something that I have devoted a pretty large portion of my life to doing because I had such a passion for it. I’m forever grateful for that opportunity.”
When the college basketball season wraps up, with the Final Four on Saturday and the national championship Monday, Steratore will get some time away from television for a few months. He lives in Washington — “I’m still a Yinzer,” he says with a laugh — and runs a sanitary supply store in Eighty Four with his brother, something they’ve done together since 1988. At some point soon, once more people receive COVID-19 vaccines and larger gatherings can safely take place, he hopes to be married to a woman he has been with for the past 15 years.
Eventually, though, that call to action will greet him again. While he’s not involved in the games in the same intimate way he once was — no longer strolling the sidelines of Lambeau Field or sprinting down the court at Madison Square Garden — he’s still connected to it. And that, to him, is more than enough.
“They’re forever embedded in your brain,” Steratore said. “You’re literally a participant now. You’re not a spectator. It’s very humbling. You’re really appreciative of all the memories that you have.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: April 2, 2021, 2:06 p.m.
