Inductees

 

Years ago, George Hayward officiated intramural football games for fellow students at Missouri Western University and, on the weekends, would ref the local youth Pop Warner League for $2 a game.

It’s a great memory for the St. Joseph native, because those thankless roles led to the big-time in the National Football League, where Hayward officiated for 25 seasons.

“When I got to the NFL, and we’d be sitting around talking, for each official, it was the same way,” Hayward said. “You didn’t want to do it any other way.”

Hayward certainly put in the work to reach the pinnacle of officiating, as he climbed from Saturday morning rec football up to weeknight high school leagues and on into small-colleges and then the Big Eight Conference. It’s quite a body of work, which is why the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame is proud to induct Hayward with the Class of 2017.

In the NFL alone, Hayward officiated 425 games from 1991 to January 2016. Among them were 19 playoff games, including the January 2007 Super Bowl between Peyton Manning’s Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears, four conference championships and four wild card games.

Throughout, he was the head linesman, meaning Hayward worked the sidelines in overseeing the chain crews that mark the original line of scrimmage, the down marker and first-downs. And because he was the referee closes to a team’s bench, if a penalty went against that team, Hayward usually was the first to hear about it. After all, a head linesman works one sideline in the first half, then switches to the other.

“It was an equal opportunity butt-chewing,” Hayward joked.

Truth is, the life of an NFL referee has had its demands. He would receive a game film as he left a stadium and then receive a critique from the NFL offices at some point during the week. It was his job to study the game tape and improve before the following Sunday, while still working at his dad’s company, Lake Road Warehouse.

“It was the good, bad and the ugly,” Hayward said of the critiques. “And we (officials) would meet for three to four hours on Saturday to go over it. And on Sundays, we were at the stadium no later than 9 a.m. for a noon game.”

Football has long been part of Hayward’s life. He graduated from St. Joseph’s Central High School in 1970, after earning all-city and all-district offensive guard honors. He then played defensive end and linebacker for Missouri Western.

From there, Hayward figured his path would lead to coaching high school football, but the prospect of low pay led him into business with his dad’s company. Still, he stayed around the game.

At first, he officiated with crews on middle school and high school games, then graduated into junior college football in Kansas before Hayward landed a spot in small-college football in the Heart of America Athletic Conference and MidAmerica Intercollegiate Athletic Association.

That was in the 1970s and 1980s and included one season in the Missouri Valley Conference.

“Every time I was at one you, you had the opportunity to move up a level and try it,” Hayward said. “And I had a lot of help from the older officials.”

One of his biggest breaks came in 1984 when the Big Eight Conference hired Hayward as a line judge, a role that set him on a path toward the NFL.

Before leaving the conference in 1991, he had worked a number of big games — two Oklahoma-Nebraska games, two Oklahoma-Texas games as well as the 1986 Citrus Bowl (Auburn vs. Southern Cal) and 1988 Sun Bowl (Army vs. Alabama). Three Big Eight teams – OU, Nebraska and Colorado – all played for national titles in that time.

“When you were working in college, you really wanted to work a bowl game,” Hayward said. “There weren’t that many back then, about 10 compared to 60 now.”

Naturally, Hayward challenged himself to be a better official. That’s why he applied for the NFL. He still remembers receiving the call.

“I didn’t ask what position they wanted me for,” Hayward said. “I was just excited to get the call.”

Now that he is retired, Hayward acknowledges that he sometimes thinks back to his career and asks, “Did I really do that?”

“Sometimes that thought does come to mind,” Hayward said. “I was very, very fortunate. It was a great way to stay involved in the game.”