Tim Benz: Pittsburgh native Jeff Bergman discusses emotions of ending 30-year NFL officiating career in Super Bowl LVII
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As young kids playing football in the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh’s North Side, Jeff Bergman and his friends wanted to become “Johnny Unitas — The Pittsburgh kid with the golden arm.” Or any one of the of the region’s many other pro football legends.
Instead, he became Jeff Bergman — a Pittsburgh kid with a yellow flag.
For three decades in the NFL, that’s worked out pretty well.
Bergman, 68, is retiring after 30 years as an NFL official, primarily as a line judge. He will be part of the officiating crew for Super Bowl LVII on Feb. 12. That will be his final game in black-and-white stripes.
“During the National Anthem, as I do every week, I think about the people who helped to put me in the position to be on that field to work the game,” Bergman said during a recent interview released by the NFL. “I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those memories thinking of those people sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.”
A Robert Morris University product, Bergman is one of eight NFL officials to have worked 30 years in the league. His father, the late Jerry Bergman, is one of the other members of that club. His brother, Jerry Jr., is an NFL down judge. His son, Brett, is a college official in the Big Ten.
Bergman recalls watching “Monday Night Football” games with his father as a child. His dad would frequently pick up the phone mid-game and call other officials to have discussions about plays that had just happened. Through osmosis like that, Bergman says the craft of officiating became imprinted on him.
“They talked about if a crew maybe kicked a rule. They talked about mechanics. I listened to all of that. I watched it. I didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on. But I became involved in the language of an official. The mechanics of an official,” Bergman recalled. “I got away from viewing the game through the eyes of a fan and more towards the eyes of an official. Coaches and officials watch a game differently than the average fan.”
Uniontown native and Washington, Pa., resident Gene Steratore is another former NFL official from a long line of zebras in his Western Pennsylvania family. His father, Gene Steratore Sr., his brother Tony and his cousin Frank are all former football and basketball officials. His family and Bergman’s family have known each other for generations.
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Gene, now an officiating analyst on CBS broadcasts, has an appreciation for Bergman’s skills as a line judge. One of those responsibilities is keeping the game clock on his watch as a backup if something goes wrong with the clock in the stadium. Steratore said he’d marvel at how easily and quickly Bergman could “in a machine-like fashion” sync the time.
“His ability to stop a clock on the first wave above his head — hitting the stop part of his watch, he never missed a second,” Steratore said. “Working the line of scrimmage means (determining) a false start, not a false start. Runner in bounds or out of bounds. Catch, no catch on your sideline. And while you are making all those rulings, bang! Click your watch. … He made it look so effortless. That’s just one small example of how professional and how good he was at what he did. And how good he is to this day.”
Terry McAulay— the referee during the Steelers’ victory over the Arizona Cardinals in Super Bowl XLIII — is another former NFL ref turned network analyst (NBC). He insists that, despite Bergman’s decision to retire, he is leaving at the top of his game.
“Jeff is working as well as I have ever seen him work in this his final year. That’s an incredible testament. He earned this. Historically, some guys have gotten the Super Bowl in their last year because it’s their last year. That is definitely not the case here. From what I watched, he just had an incredible year,” McAulay said.
As FootballZebras.com outlined, retirement will allow Bergman to spend more time with his wife, Beth Anne, who has twice battled cancer. Bergman stepped aside from officiating in 1997 and 2020 to be closer to her during those bouts.
Dean Blandino, former NFL vice president of officiating and Fox analyst, once said of Bergman to Referee.com, “If you would look at a football official in the dictionary, Jeff Bergman comes to mind. … What has always stood out about Jeff is just his attention to his craft. He has the ability to break things down, whether it’s on the field or in the film room, and break it down in a way I have never seen an official do before — not just from officiating X’s and O’s, but football X’s and O’s. It’s understanding formations and being able to recognize things that teams are doing and being able to anticipate before the snap and almost know where the critical part of the play is going to be before it happens.”
This will be Bergman’s third Super Bowl as a line judge. He also worked New England’s Super Bowl LIII win over the Rams and Green Bay’s Super Bowl XXXI win over the Patriots. Much like players often say when they leave the NFL, one thing Bergman says he’ll miss about officiating is the bond he has with the rest of his crew.
“When you leave the dressing room and walk through the tunnel onto the field, you only have six other friends,” Bergman said. “Because you are put under those stressful conditions, you develop a bond and a friendship that is unbreakable. You have those friends for life.”