J

erry McGee ’65 plans to keep working until 2012 at his day job as president of Wingate University, but this will be the 35th and last year he devotes to his hobby as a college football official. Now 64, he isn’t sure he can still keep up with wide receivers who cover 40 yards in about four seconds.

“My plans are to officiate one more season and then leave my shoes at the 50-yard line,” he says. “By the end of this coming season I will have worked close to 400 games. I’ve officiated at 19 bowl games and two national championship games. I’m really going to miss being out on the field, but it’s time.”

McGee is a field judge who works Atlantic Coast Conference games during the regular season. He lines up in the defensive secondary, about 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. “I spend most of the game running backwards. So, on a long pass play to the corner of the end zone, the receiver will already be 10 yards downfield before I can react to the play. That means I have a 10-yard head start to back pedal and get to the spot where I think the play will be made. With one eye I watch the receiver to see if he makes the catch. With my other eye I watch the defender to see if he interferes. And with my third eye I watch the ground to see if the receiver drags a toe a couple of inches before he goes out of bounds.”

With that, McGee gives out a hearty laugh. But it isn’t a laughing matter when a national championship is on the line, as it was at the 1997 Rose Bowl. With time running out, Ohio State was driving to upset Arizona State and ran a long pass play to the sideline. The receiver, the defender, the ball and McGee all arrived at the 5-yard line at the same instant. The ball popped away, and as 93,852 fans held their breath, McGee reached for the yellow flag in his back pocket to call defensive pass interference. Ohio State scored on the next play to win the game. “It was the only time I ever got my name on the front page of USA Today,” he chuckles.

He occasionally takes flack from fans. “I was at a Baptist State Convention meeting one year and my wife brought a lady over to introduce her to me. And as soon as this woman saw me, she gave me an ice-cold stare. Turns out, she was a Carolina fan and she was still mad about a call I made against Carolina in a game with Maryland more than 15 years ago.”

McGee first learned officiating working intramural games while a student at East Carolina. Compared to those, he says most other games are piece of cake. “If you can work the Sigma Nu–Pi Kappa Alpha game, then Notre Dame–Michigan is a walk in the park.”

After graduating from East Carolina with a degree in physical education, McGee, a native of Rockingham, earned a master’s in counseling from Appalachian State and a doctorate in education from Nova Southeastern University. After a stint in the Army he worked for Richmond Community College and followed that with positions of increasing responsibility at Gardner-Webb University, Meredith College and Furman University. He became president of Wingate University, located about 35 miles east of Charlotte, in 1992.

His years at Wingate have been transformational for what was a small, Baptist-affiliated school. It had about 1,100 students when he arrived; now it has 2,200. He led the effort to found a school of pharmacy and oversaw the construction of 15 new buildings on campus. This fall Wingate begins offering a physician’s assistant program and launches a doctor of education degree.

Three years ago he negotiated the delicate process of severing Wingate’s ties to the Baptist State Convention, which eventually will cost the school $1 million a year in funding. Nobody got their nose out of joint and Wingate remains in strong shape financially.

He’s popular with students because he listens. At the beginning of each semester he eats dinner with several freshmen once a week to get to know them and to inquire about any problems they’re having. He throws a big Super Bowl party for students every year, dressed in his ref’s outfit.

“When I was at East Carolina, most of the students came off the farm or from mill towns. I think the professors saw more potential in us than we saw in ourselves. East Carolina is a very different place now but nothing will change the fact that they took me off mill hill and changed my life.”

Steve Tuttle