Art McNally
Football
Legendary NFL Official
It is an old-fashioned accountant’s ledger that McNally bought when he was moonlighting as a referee in Philadelphia shortly after his 1946 discharge from the Marine Corps.
Every time McNally worked a game, he entered it in The Book. The date, the teams, the site, the fee, even the names of the other officials. McNally printed each word and skipped two lines between each entry.
This went on for 22 years and more than 3,000 games. Every game is duly recorded, starting with a sandlot football game between St. Anthony’s and the Clymer Athletic Club at American and Luzerne Streets. The date was October 13, 1946. McNally earned $5 that day.
“I thought that was good money for blowing a whistle, so I kept doing it,” said McNally, who held a full-time teaching position at Central High School. “I kept my (referee’s) shirt in the trunk of the car. I was on call seven days a week.”
The Book shows that McNally worked his way up the ladder through the local high school leagues, the semi-pro football leagues, even the church league basketball leagues in South Philadelphia in which he refereed three games a night for $15. A lot of games, a lot of whistles.
McNally finally broke into collegebasketball, spent one season in the National Basketball Association, then went to the NFL as a field judge in 1959. He became an NFL referee one year later and in 1968 he was appointed the supervisor of league officials.
This year, the 97-year-old McNally became the first referee inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Don Shula, the NFL’s all-time winningest coach, worked alongside McNally on the league’s Competition Committee. Shula described him with the words, “honesty, integrity and dedication.” For a career official, there can be no finer tribute.
What’s ironic is McNally almost turned the NFL down when it approached him about a job. He had just finished one unhappy season in the NBA (“It was my first exposure to fans and coaches who could really holler,” he said.) and he was eager to return to the relative calm of high school and college ball.
McNally explained this to supervisor of NFL officials Mike Wilson, who had contacted him about a job, but Wilson convinced McNally to at least meet with NFL Commissioner Bert Bell.
“Bert came right to the point,” McNally recalled. “He said, ‘Son, would you like to work an Army-Navy game?’ I said, ‘Sure, who wouldn’t?’ Then Bert said, ‘In the NFL, every game is the Army-Navy game.’ The more I thought about it, I realized, ‘Yeah, that’s the big leagues. If I’m gonna be an official, I ought to try it.’ So I did.”
McNally’s first on field experience was a pre-season game between the Eagles and the New York Giants.
“The Eagles lined up for a kickoff and they were one man short,” McNally said. “I guess I thought I was back in high school because I yelled to their bench, ‘You’ve only got ten men on the field.’ A Giants coach said, ‘Shut up and let them play with whatever they want.’
“A few weeks later, I had another Giants game. The same coach said, ‘Hey, kid, you counting players for them again today?’ I learned my lesson.
“I couldn’t always be right, but I always tried to be honest,” McNally said. “I was that way when I was working sandlot games in Philadelphia, and I was that way in the NFL.”
In 1973, McNally took over the entire NFL officiating operation. In this role, he oversaw the evolution of officiating from the first use of game film to evaluate the officials’ performance to the use of walkie-talkies on the field to the biggest innovation of all, the use of video instant replay in 1985.
“When instant replay was first proposed, I was dead set against it,” he said. “I’m from the old school. See the play, boom, call it. But when TV came along with replays that showed mistakes (by officials) and we saw a way to correct them on the spot, I felt strongly we should use it.
“My philosophy has always been, ‘Get the call right.’ If it takes a review, fine, just get it right.”
The Baseball Hall of Fame has honored umpires. The Hockey Hall of Fame and Basketball Hall of Fame had done the same for referees. But there was no on field official in the Pro Football Hall of Fame until Art McNally was inducted in the 2022 class. The selection was greeted with a loud cheer across the NFL.
“Art really pulled it all together,” said Ed Hochuli, a long time NFL referee. “He took (officiating) from an avocation to a profession and set the stage for everything that came after that.”
“It’s been obviously a long time that there have been on people from the officiating side who have gotten into the Hall of Fame. There have been some incredible officials along the way who can make a great argument they ought to be in the Hall of Fame. But none of the officials would disagree that if there is only one or, if there is a first, Art McNally shouldbe the guy.
“If you look up the definition of integrity in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Art McNally.”
By Ray Didinger - Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame Inductee
