The Villages Daily Sun

THE VILLAGES — Robert Nelson heard the boos rain down from the stands.

He had heard those sounds before, but this time it was a little different because some of the voices sounded very familiar.

“We were walking off the field at halftime, and of course some of the fans wanted to let us know what they thought of the job we were doing,” he said.

“When we passed by where our wives were sitting, we kind of gave them a little wave but then we realized they were booing us, too.

“When we asked them about it later, they all said the people around them were booing, so they felt they had to join in.”

Such is the life of a college football official.

From the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, Nelson, who moved to The Villages 11 years ago, was a big-time college football official.

He called games in the Mid-America Conference. He called games in the Big 10. He called bowl games.

And he spent enough time with coaching legends like Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz and Joe Paterno yapping in his ear to write a book.

“Bo would have an assistant coach who would work on the officials all game,” he said. “That way if we got so bad that we had to throw somebody out, it wouldn’t be Bo.”

On the other hand, Paterno, the legendary Penn State coach, stayed pretty cool when talking to the officials.

“He was probably the calmest coach we had to deal with,” Nelson said. “He could chew you out in the nicest way. It didn’t even feel like he was chewing on you.”

Not so with Holtz or Hayes.

“We called Holtz the rabbit,” Nelson said. “He was all over the place. He would yell at you, and when you turned around he was already 30 yards down the field.”

And then there was Hayes.

“I called pass interference on Ohio State one time and Woody went into a fit. And nobody could do a fit like Woody.”

But it was Hayes himself who got Nelson into big-time officiating.

“Woody was so afraid of having holding penalties called on his team he would hire officials to work his practices,” said Nelson, who began his career working high school games.

“One day he asked me where I was working the next Saturday and I told him I didn’t work Saturday.

“He told me I should and he made a couple of phone calls, and the next thing I knew, I got a call from the MAC.”

And it’s a MAC game that stands out most vividly in Nelson’s memory.

Bowling Green was playing Fresno State in a bowl game (the California Raisin bowl game),” he said.

“I made a call where a Fresno State defensive back made an interception right on the goal line late in the fourth quarter and everybody in the stadium thought it should be a touchback and that Fresno would get the ball at the 20.

“I ruled that he had caught the ball at the 1 and that’s where I spotted it. That didn’t make anybody happy. The Bowling Green fans thought it should have been incomplete and the Fresno State fans thought it should have been a touchback. I got it from both sidelines.

“So Fresno marched all the way down to the Bowling Green 6 and had time for one more play.

“I had never said a prayer on the field that I wouldn’t have to make a call, but I said one then. There was no way I wanted to be in a position to make a catch-no-catch call on the last play of that game. I got lucky and the ball went the other way and was intercepted in the end zone by Bowling Green.”

Another of Nelson’s great stories involves the pregame coin flip.

“Bill Cosby was being honored at one of the games,” he said. “He came out to do the coin flip, and as we were walking out, he turned to me and said he didn’t have a coin.

“I gave him the silver dollar I always carried and he did the flip. I never got my silver dollar back.”

And though it’s been awhile since he’s been inside the lines, Nelson still gets that fire in his belly come football season.

“I was listening to the radio the other day and they started playing what I call football music,” he said. “It sent a chill up my spine.”

And when he gets the chance, he does return to the sidelines.

“I’ve got a lot of friends who are officials in the NFL,” he said. “And I’ll go to games in Jacksonville or Tampa when they are working.

“The only problem with sitting on the sidelines is that you can’t really see.”

But there is one upside — he doesn’t have to go to the locker room at the half anymore.

“All those years, I never got to see the halftime show. I loved the bands, so that was the reason I made sure I was out on the field before the game. I loved watching the bands do the pregame show.

Steve Trivett is a sportswriter for the Daily Sun. He may be reached at sports@thevillagesmedia.com.