13. The NFL’s Cast of Characters

I didn’t want to be commissioner, like I said, but I wonder how some of my conversations with various owners, general managers, and coaches might have been different if I had been.

Commissioner or not, my dealings with most in the NFL were always entertaining and memorable.

I moved to New York in 1998 and, if you remember, initially my wife Gail decided to stay in Sacramento because she really liked her job as executive assistant to the superintendent of the Sacramento School District. She wasn’t sure I’d last in New York.

But I did take every opportunity I could to fly to the West Coast to see her. I decided to combine one of the trips home with a visit to the Raiders training camp, which wasn’t that far away in Napa Valley.

It was the second time the NFL had sent me to the Raiders training camp, the first being during my rookie season as an official in 1996. But this was the first time I was going as a supervisor. I remember being full of enthusiasm and confidence. I walked up to infamous owner Al Davis and said, rather innocently: “Hello Mr. Davis, I’m Mike Pereira, supervisor of officials…”

“I know who you are,” Davis said with a disgusted look on his face. “You fucked us in the game last year in Kansas City. You know you did. You know you fucked us in that game, and I will not forget that you fucked us in that game.”

You know how I like to talk, but I was speechless. I was stunned that Davis would talk to somebody from the league office that way. I guess I was also a little naïve because I would learn quickly that Davis’ relationship with the NFL was colder than a walk down Park Avenue in February.

Here’s the thing; I had nothing to do with the Raiders–Chiefs game that Davis was talking about in 1997, a game lost by the Raiders 28–27. I wasn’t even there, but I guess I was guilty by association.

When I got back to New York, I remember telling Jerry Seeman about my visit, and he seemed pretty upset by it. Seeman wrote a letter to Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, making me document every detail of what Davis said. It’s no secret Commissioners Pete Rozelle and Tagliabue were not big fans. Davis wasn’t just a thorn in the league’s side…he was a cactus.

I never heard where it went beyond that because I never expected, nor received, any apology from Davis. But my relationship with the Raiders took an unlikely turn from an improbable person: Amy Trask. She was the chief executive of the Raiders, and when I went to meet with their coaching staff in the spring, I was informed that she wanted to meet with me.

There was, obviously, no love lost between the Raiders and the officiating department, and after my meeting with the coaches you’ll never guess what Trask wanted to talk to me about. While I was expecting to get more bashing of the league, what I got from her was that she wanted to talk about illegal contact.

The chief executive of the Raiders was questioning me about an illegal contact play from the year before. I explained to her how illegal contact was a foul that occurred before a pass was thrown. It’s not like a pass interference penalty, where the foul occurs while the ball is in the air. We chatted a little bit longer about the play in question and she accepted my explanation. I was really impressed with her knowledge of the game.

“I remember when that conversation concluded that I thought we could have a very honest, healthy, robust dialogue,” Trask said when I asked her to recall my visit.

“We could agree, we could disagree, or we could simply agree to disagree. It was clear to me that you and I were not always going to agree on things, but I felt very good that you were willing to have a conversation with me and when it was over, felt that we understood one another.”

Although some within and outside the Raiders organization won’t want to hear it, I came to respect Trask more than any person involved with that team. We actually ended up developing a pretty good friendship. After becoming the VP of officiating, I used to spend every Sunday in the command center in New York, and if a call went against the Raiders, we would joke around the office about how long it would take before I got an email from Amy.

We’d watch my phone, and sure enough, within 25 seconds, I’d get the “what-kind-of-call-was-that?” email from Amy. If I didn’t respond right away, she would start re-emailing me about every 15 seconds.

“You and I had some very, very fierce disagreements and very significant differences of opinion, but I always—as much as I wanted to strangle you—enjoyed our dialogues and our disagreements,” Trask laughed.

“During a game, if I saw something, either a call or non-call, I would just sit there in the suite and just hit resend, resend, resend, until I got a response.”

It became a tradition between Amy and me, a love-hate-love relationship. To this day, she is still somebody I consider a very good friend and an astute football person, as demonstrated by her role at CBS.

While things weren’t always so humorous with Amy, some of my interactions with others around the NFL were quite hysterical.

Enter former Detroit coach Wayne Fontes.

It was one of my first preseason games during my rookie year as an official, and part of the head linesman and side judge’s pregame responsibilities were to see the visiting coach 90 minutes prior to kickoff. The officials have a set list of questions they normally go over with the coaches, including inquiring if there are any special plays they might be considering so they don’t catch officials by surprise.

We went looking for Coach Fontes in his office and he was already out on the field. When we found him, head linesman Earnie Frantz told me to ask Coach Fontes the questions. It was the first time I had to ask the pregame questions of a head coach, and I was very nervous. With Frantz standing behind me, I asked Fontes if the Lions had any plans of running any special plays that the officials needed to know about.

“Yes, we do,” Fontes said. And there I am, at the ready, with a note card and pencil in hand to write down his every word.

“We are going to run a screen pass from our own end zone,” he continued. “Our quarterback is going to drop deep into the end zone; he’s then going to throw a pass off the face of the first deck in the stadium. It will bounce off the façade back onto the field, hit the right upright, and then our running back is going to catch it and run for a touchdown.”

I fell for it, hook, line and sinker. I wrote down everything until he said the ball would hit the right upright. I looked up to see Fontes and Frantz laughing their butts off. If it had been an audition to play the village idiot, I would have definitely gotten the part.

“That was to make a fool out of you, and Fontes did exactly what he intended to do,” laughed Frantz.

I have to admit, it was pretty funny.

Not all my encounters would be so amusing, especially when it came to dealing with a coach such as Bill Parcells. It was my second year in the league and I had a game in Miami with the Dolphins and New York Jets, whom Parcells coached at the time.

The game was winding down in the fourth quarter, with Miami leading 24–17, but the Jets were driving. On a fourth- down play, Jets quarterback Glenn Foley attempted a pass to Wayne Chrebet, who was going to the ground as he caught the ball. His knees were on the ground and then he launched forward, sticking both arms out in an attempt to get the first down, but the ball popped out when he hit the ground. I was on the opposite side of the field, but the official closest to the play ruled the pass incomplete. There wasn’t any instant replay that year, and Parcells lost it. He went nuts.

Even though it wasn’t my call, I was in front of the Jets bench and I got an earful on the sideline. Make that three or four earfuls. I think my ears were so embarrassed by what Parcells said to me they turned red.

It didn’t end after that, even though the game did.

Parcells made a mad dash toward field judge Tom Sifferman, who made the call. I was only in my second year and I was worried that he might say or do something to Sifferman that he’d regret, so I ran with him. I got between the two of them so Parcells wouldn’t get himself in any trouble. He railed on Sifferman pretty good, too. Then he left.

The funny thing about it is the next day a photo appeared in newspapers across the country that showed Parcells yelling at me. But there was no Sifferman in the picture. An Associated Press photographer had taken the shot, but Sifferman had been cut out of it so it looked like Parcells was yelling at me. He had already done plenty of that earlier.

However, since it was just Parcells and I in the photo, it looked like it was me that was getting flak for making the call.

There’s one more amazing part to this story. When I got home from work that Monday I had a voice mail from Parcells. He had called to apologize, saying what he said Sunday was totally unacceptable. He also said he was embarrassed by his actions and that he was sincerely sorry. That shows you what kind of guy Bill Parcells is. For all the emotion and pressure that these guys are under, a man’s true colors come out when he takes the time to make a phone call like that to apologize.

A footnote about Parcells: when he came back to coach with the Dallas Cowboys in 2003, I had already moved on to the league office. I saw him at the league meetings and he stopped to tell me that I’d be happy he was back in the league because he would never call and complain about the officiating. He didn’t want a player or an assistant coach to think that way. He told me officials don’t cause teams to lose, that it’s a team’s inability to overcome its own mistakes that causes it to lose games. He was true to his word and never called to complain about the officials.

Marty Schottenheimer was also typical of the Parcells ilk. He didn’t want his teams to think that officiating had anything to do with winning or losing.

I will tell you that kind of behavior is not common among today’s NFL coaches. It seems the new breed of coaches is always looking for excuses. Guys like Parcells and Schottenheimer weren’t that way.

I remember getting a call in 2001 from Schottenheimer when he was coach of the Redskins, and he told me he had a deal for me. He said that he would never call me when they lost, that he would only call to ask me questions if his team won.

Fair enough, I thought.

We didn’t get to talk much that season because the Redskins finished 8–8. But when he would call, technology had developed to a point where he could just tell me to look up a play number.

For example, he’d tell me to call up play No. 32 on offense and we could both pull it up and look at it together. He was trying to learn from an officiating perspective and I was trying to learn from a coaching perspective.

Schottenheimer would tell me that play 32 looked like illegal contact to him. So we would run the play and I’d explain why I didn’t think it was illegal contact. On that particular play in question, I told him to look at the quarterback, who had rolled out of the pocket. Even though the contact was six yards downfield, by the time the official looked back, the quarterback was clearly out of the pocket and the restriction was off.

“I got it,” he would say. “You win that one. Let’s go to the next one.”

We’d go back and forth, and it was wonderful. We’d go over several plays, and at the end of the day, sometimes I’d win and sometimes he’d win.

Again, we didn’t get to talk much that season, but the following year he went to San Diego and his teams started winning—a lot. Marty was always true to form. He would never call me after his team would lose, only when they won.

Then, it happened. The Chargers suffered a very tough playoff loss to the Jets in overtime in 2004…and the phone rang. Marty was on the line, and I was shocked, not knowing what was going to come next.

”I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I said I would never call when we lost. But here’s my justification…we covered the spread.”

We both laughed for a good minute. Marty was, and still is, a priceless character. He’s a friend, a great human being, and one of the guys I really enjoyed in the coaching profession. I always enjoyed our great conversations.

One coach who wasn’t the biggest Pereira fan in the world—and I know many of you are finding that very hard to believe—was former Buffalo coach Marv Levy.

It was the last game of the 1997 regular season—in my second year—and I had a Bills game at Green Bay. Buffalo great Steve Tasker, one of the best special teamers to play the game, announced that he would be retiring after that game.

I was the side judge and we were only 1:37 into the game when Tasker attempted to field a punt. The ball, though, hit the ground, then a Bills player, and then bounced into the end zone. Green Bay’s Tyrone Davis recovered it and I ruled it a touchdown.

Tasker didn’t realize what I called and while he was leaving the field, suddenly concluded I said it was a Packers touchdown. He turned around and charged into the end zone to yell at back judge Tom Sifferman, claiming he never touched the ball. He bumped into Sifferman, and I know he never intended to, but he was flagged for contact with a game official and was ejected from the game. Here I am, only my second year in the league, knowing that I’m going into the league office the next season, and I make a call that leads to an ejection of a seven-time Pro Bowler less than two minutes into his last game.

Referee Mike Carey was the one who officially ejected Tasker—who was right, he didn’t touch it. The ball actually grazed off teammate Raymond Jackson’s back before going into the end zone. But nevertheless, because he bumped Sifferman, Tasker was kicked out.

I was standing on the sideline afterward, and Levy was letting me have it.

“How could you throw a guy out who is in his last game?”

“How could you do that?”

“How could you do it just 1:37 into the game?”

“Do you have no conscience?”

All I could do was stand there quietly with my hands in my pockets and take it. While I had empathy for what Levy was saying, there was not much I could do about it at that point.

I got to know Tasker better when I moved into the league office, because after he retired he became a broadcaster for CBS. To this day, when I see him along with Carey, the three of us still laugh about it.

My relationship with Levy, as I said, wasn’t the best. But the thing I did like about Marv was that he was a no-nonsense guy. He wouldn’t really argue, but rather just state his belief. If my opinion was different, he’d make his point and move on and we would agree to disagree.

I always looked at Levy as someone who was straight with me. Unlike some of the other coaches, who would try to “work me,” I always felt Marv was sincere in what his intentions were.

From one straight shooter to the next, another coach who was one of the straightest of them all was Bill Belichick. What you see, hoodie and all, is definitely what you get.

I’ll never forget a wake I attended during the 2005 season for Giants owner Wellington Mara. I saw Belichick across the room, but we really didn’t get to talk until we were both leaving.

Belichick told me that he was looking at me from across the room and then told me that I looked like shit. I swear. Those were his exact words. You look like shit.

I know how that might look, but he didn’t really mean it the way it sounded.

“I was thinking about it,” Belichick told me, “and I suddenly realized something. You never win, do you? Because you have to deal with the losers every week.”

By losers, he was referring to me getting complaints about the officiating from teams that lost every week. I told him that I hadn’t really thought about it like that, but that he was correct on both counts.

“When you’re a coach and you win, it’s the most euphoric feeling in the world,” he continued. “There’s nothing better as a head coach than when you win a football game.

“But when you lose it’s devastating. It just eats at you. You can’t believe how awful it is, and it takes a long time for that feeling to go away. I looked at you and I realized you never get to feel the euphoria.”

He told me that he was going to call me someday after a loss, just to tell me that my guys did a good job. I told him I really appreciated that.

I’m still waiting for that call. I never got that call or any others after Spygate, the Patriots videotaping controversy in 2007. Belichick must have thought I had something to do with that. Clearly, as you’re about to find out, he wasn’t the only one.

When FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer broke the story that the Patriots illegally filmed the Jets defensive coaches’ signals from their own sideline during their game on September 9, 2007, Glazer also got the accompanying video that aired on FOX to go with his report.

A lot of people, including several NFL bigwigs, thought I had given the video to Glazer. They thought that because the video was first viewed from my office in the NFL Command Center. The NFL’s top brass, including Commissioner Goodell, came to see the tape, and they thought I had a hand in sending it to Glazer.

In reality, it simply wasn’t true. I didn’t give it to Glazer and I don’t know how he got it. And quite frankly, I don’t give a damn. To this day, I still don’t know.

But at the time, the league made me feel like I was the one being investigated for doing something wrong. Over the next month, I got called into the NFL security department several times and interrogated about how FOX got the tape. It felt a little like how I imagine the Nuremberg Trials went.

It finally got to the point where I was fed up, and I told the NFL to give me a lie detector test if they didn’t believe me. I told them over and over again that I didn’t have anything to do with Glazer getting the video.

Belichick and the Patriots were both disciplined. Belichick was fined $500,000, the largest fine ever imposed on a coach, and the Patriots were fined $250,000 and lost their first-round pick (31st overall) in the 2008 NFL Draft.

Because of Spygate, I think Belichick associated me with that and I’ve never really talked to him again to this day. Belichick has a tremendous ability to unite his teams by saying that people are out to get them. I think it was true of Spygate then, and I think it was true of Deflategate in 2014 as well.

Everyone knows Belichick is a great coach. He’s got the uncanny ability to get a team to play together. You can make fun of his hoody pullovers, you can make fun of his news-conference sound bites like “We’re on to Cincinnati” when he doesn’t want to answer a question, but you can’t make fun of his record or the four Super Bowls he’s won.

And then there’s former NFL coach and current ESPN broadcaster Jon Gruden. If there’s one thing I regret since I’ve crossed over to the media side, at least to some degree, it is an article I wrote on FOXSports.com about him in 2011, in which I called him a blowhard.

Damn Internet. Unfortunately, I was able to find exactly what I wrote:

I am not a fan of Gruden’s. Not today, not yesterday, not when I worked for the NFL and not when I was working on the field as a side judge. He was a loudmouth as a coach who constantly disrespected officials and he is a blowhard in the broadcast booth that spouts off when he doesn’t know what he is talking about.

I respect his knowledge about the Xs and Os when it comes to coaching and playing the game of football, but I have very little respect for him when it comes to officiating and his knowledge of the rules.

Looking back on it now, I was probably too harsh. I shouldn’t have written that about a fellow media member, but in reality, I did it out of frustration. Gruden was by far the toughest coach that any official had to deal with. 

My issue with him was this: instead of coming to me with a problem, which he never did, he would berate officials on the sideline. It really bothered me because it was a matter of total disrespect. I would get calls from officials who told me that Gruden had crossed the line. During those conversations, I would always ask them why they hadn’t penalized him for his behavior, because I knew that would have stopped it.

But officials have a tendency not to throw flags on coaches, and he was one guy it seemed they just wouldn’t flag. He was awful.

There’s no question, from 1998 to 2008 when he was a head coach, if you asked officials who was the worst coach they had to deal with on the sideline, Gruden would have won in a landslide. It was because of the way he would go after them. He consistently disrespected officials during a game.

Then when Gruden got to the broadcasting side, he would bash officials on the air for things they weren’t wrong on. It was irritating. And on a late December Monday night, I had finally had enough. So I took out my frustrations and wrote the column.

Look, he’s a good announcer. And one could certainly argue he’s a heckuva coach. He won a Super Bowl. But the persona of Jon “I love ya, man” Gruden is not the total picture of the man. That was not genuine and not appreciated.

On the other hand, somebody I really came to appreciate quite a bit was former Bills and Colts executive Bill Polian.

My relationship with him is really interesting because I wonder how the hell I can love and hate a guy at the same time. If you’ve ever had a love/hate relationship with somebody, you know exactly what I mean.

Polian had the fiercest Irish temper I have ever seen during a football season. But in the offseason, he was a totally different guy.

He’s a wonderfully warm man, whom I enjoyed playing golf, talking to, and learning from. He’s just a terrific guy, and my wife and I really enjoyed being around him and his wife Eileen.

But during the season, forget it. Some of my fiercest battles, when I was in the league office, were with Polian.

Intense doesn’t begin to describe him. Think Herm Edwards “You Play to Win the Game” intense and double it. He would argue with me on everything when it came to officiating. Teams could call in or send in reports when they had complaints involving officials.

When he didn’t like what officials did on the field, he would definitely let me know about it. And many times he didn’t like the answers I would give when I explained their actions.

“The fact that you wouldn’t agree with me when I thought I was 100 percent right would drive me crazy,” Polian laughed when I asked him to recall our battles.

“You would give me, ‘Well, we could support that call.’ To this day, I don’t know what support means. Then we had such a great time at the Competition Committee meetings that I would forget. Then I wouldn’t get mad again until we got some bad calls.”

We had some pretty extraordinary clashes. I didn’t want to take his phone calls because they were so difficult. It was like being yelled at constantly by your worst enemy.

I don’t know if I’d say the calls were demeaning, because I don’t think it was really about me, but rather about Polian’s frustrations.

And it didn’t matter if it was calling the league office or going after our supervisors at game sites, he would never hesitate if he felt something was called incorrectly. But now being out of the game for a few years has changed his perspective a little.

“I look back now on my competitive days and say, probably 80 percent of the calls that I complained about I shouldn’t have complained about. I know you’re going to write that and underline,” he laughed.

But I will say that he knew officiating because he worked in the league office and in game operations and was involved with the disciplining of players. However, I think his temper got the best of him.

The reason I say that is because I got to see a different side of him during the offseason.

Just like the seasons change, so did Polian’s personality when it came to football season. Let’s just say I knew I’d always need an umbrella from September to January because the forecast was always stormy when dealing with him.

There’s no arguing, however, when it comes to discussing how successful Polian was.

He worked for three very successful franchises, the first in Buffalo from 1986 to ’92, where the Bills went to four consecutive Super Bowls. Yes, they lost them all, but to this day, no franchise has ever gone to four straight Super Bowls.

He moved on to become GM of the newly formed Carolina team in 1995 and the Panthers went to the NFC Championship Game in only their second season, which led Polian to another great opportunity.

In 1998, Polian became president and GM of the Indianapolis Colts. The Colts selected Peyton Manning with the No. 1 pick that draft, and the rest, as they say, is history.

You see Polian today as a mild-mannered analyst for ESPN, but he was one tough cookie to deal with.

I still consider him a good friend. It’s crazy, but that’s the way I feel about that man who, deservedly so, was inducted into the Hall of Fame prior to the 2015 season.

Another guy that I became friends with over the years was coach Mike Shanahan, but my first introduction to him was not such a good one.

It was January 4, 1998, and I was a second-year official, while Shanahan was coach of the Denver Broncos. Picture this: it was my first—and last—playoff game as an on-field official, because as you already know, I moved into the league office the next season. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I was assigned to be the side judge in the AFC divisional round game between the Broncos and the Chiefs in Kansas City.

The pressure was enormous. The jump from the regular season to the playoffs is like going from kindergarten straight to junior high. The pressure that bears down on you is incredible.

Butterflies the size of vultures were swirling around in my stomach as the game began, and in the first quarter, Broncos quarterback John Elway attempted a pass to Willie Green, who was running an out and up route. I totally missed making the most blatant, illegal contact call you’ve ever seen.

The very technical term for it: chocking. Yep, I admit it. I gagged in front of millions of viewers and I didn’t need to see a replay to know I missed it. I knew it right after the play ended. I’ll never forget it. I’ll take the inability to make that call in a big game to my grave.

It was right in front of Shanahan, and he was not happy with me.

“I do remember that,” Shanahan laughed when I asked him recently to recall that play. “When I look back now, what I realized as a coach is that we know what is supposed to happen on a specific play—and the officials don’t. And if you take your eye off it for a second, you could miss it.

“I get it. After I was in the league for awhile, if there was a unique play or we were doing something different, I started alerting the officials as to what was going to happen so they’d be aware of it. So even though I was kind of upset at the time, I figured out to tell the officials on a play like that to watch the possible out and up contact prior to the play.”

Interestingly, if you ask an official what his best call was, many would probably have a hard time remembering. Ask them what their worst call was and they’ll relive it like it was yesterday. It’s kind of like arthritis—once you get it, it never goes away.

“I’m just glad you didn’t miss the big call in that game,” Shanahan reminded me.

That was the call I mentioned in the last chapter, the Tony Gonzalez force-out play, where I ruled he wasn’t forced out by a Denver defender but rather out of bounds, voiding what would have been a winning touchdown for the Chiefs.

“That was the best call,” Shanahan said. “I couldn’t even see it from the sideline. Then they had to replay it a couple times and, of course, at that time we didn’t have replay. I got a chance to see it in slow motion later on, and it was the right call. It was a 14–10 game at the time; that’s why every play, every call is so critical. If you don’t make the right call on that play, we don’t win the Super Bowl that year.”

Denver held on to beat the Chiefs, then went on to beat Pittsburgh in the AFC Championship Game and Green Bay in the Super Bowl.

But I wasn’t done with Shanahan, even when I was done with the NFL. I had already begun working at FOX and a funny thing happened on my way to the third hole at the Ancil Hoffman Golf Course on a Monday early in the NFL season in 2010.

My phone rang; it was Shanahan calling. He was in his first season as the Redskins coach and he wanted me to look at a play from his team’s game from the previous day, which happened to be a 27–24 loss to the Colts.

I remember laughing while asking him if he got the memo that I had retired. He knew that, but he wanted my opinion on a play because he was interested to hear my take on things since we had worked together for such a long time.

When you’re dealing with a class act like Mike Shanahan, some things never get old.

While I’ve discussed several characters from my past, none were, perhaps, funnier or crazier than Dean Look.

Let me start out by saying Look was a great official. I’m sure many of you will remember one of the most famous plays in NFL history, the Catch, by San Francisco’s Dwight Clark in the 1982 NFC Championship Game against Dallas. He’s the guy that can be seen in photos and video extending his hands signaling touchdown to give the 49ers a 28–27 win over the Cowboys. Like I said, Look was a great official.

But there are a couple stories of Look dealing with two coaches, Tom Coughlin and Mike Ditka, who will either make you laugh or sigh. I haven’t decided which yet.

Let’s start with Coughlin. It was 1999 and my second year as supervisor of officials. There’s really no special reason why I was there, but I happened to go to a preseason game in Jacksonville.

Ninety minutes prior to a game, the officials meet with both coaches. I decided to go with the officials to the Coughlin meeting because I had gotten to know him a little bit. We got to his office and I saw Tom, so I shook his hand. The other official shook his hand as well, followed by Dean Look, who also shook his hand.

Coughlin had a strange reaction when we got done shaking hands, but nothing really registered with me at the time. Anyway, the officials went through their normal routine with him and then left.

I stuck around Coughlin’s office because I wanted to see how things had been going for him, and as the officials were leaving, he got agitated.

“Did you see what Dean Look did?” he barked at me afterward.

I told him I hadn’t, and he followed with this gem:

“He picked his nose and then stuck his hand out to shake my hand,” he said. “He picked his nose!”

The more Coughlin said it, the angrier he got.

“He picked his nose and then stuck his hand out to directly shake my hand.”

I was astonished, and if looks could kill, Dean Look would have been deader than a zebra at a lion convention. I asked Coughlin if he shook Look’s hand.

“What am I supposed to do?” he shouted. “I was looking right at him and saw him pick his nose.”

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I made my way back into the officials’ locker room, where I found Look, and then ask him if he picked his nose and then shook Coughlin’s hand. He looked back at me and had a big, ear-to-ear smile on his face. That’s the only comment I needed.

There’s only one Dean Look, folks….

There was also only one Mike Ditka. The feisty former Chicago coach could have been the logo for the Bears, he snarled so much. But by the time of this next story, Ditka had become coach of the New Orleans Saints, who were visiting Denver for a preseason game in 1998. A person might assume that things were a little bit looser in the preseason, right? Wasn’t it our parents who said “Never assume?”

It was Friday, August 14, and Look was working the game. I was there as the supervisor. Late in the fourth quarter, Look called a pass incomplete in front of the New Orleans bench. Did I mention it was a preseason game?

“It was in the last two minutes of the game, and Ditka’s quarterback threw the ball and the receiver was going across the middle and the ball was behind him,” Look remembered when I asked him to recall the story. “The receiver stopped and came back, and when he tried to make the catch, he hit the ground and so did the ball. The ball bounced up in his hands and then he raised it in the air like he had caught it. I got a good look at it and called it incomplete.’’

Ditka went nuts on Look. He thought it was a completed pass and he was running down the sideline, ranting and raving.

“He was yelling at me, indicating to me that I didn’t have parents and things like that. I just pointed at him and told him that the ball hit the ground,” Look said.

After the game, I asked Look what Ditka said to him.

“Ditka yelled that he’d bet me $1,000 that the ball didn’t hit the ground.”

I might have been almost as astonished as when Coughlin told me Look had picked his nose before shaking his hand.

I asked what his response was, and my voice must have sounded incredulous. “I told him I’d take that bet,” Look laughed.

After the game, as we were leaving the stadium, we walked past the Saints’ team buses, and out popped Ditka. He got right in Look’s face.

As I was wondering if I needed to call in the cavalry, Da Coach asked Look: “Where do I send the check?”

The three of us cracked up laughing. Look told him he could make it out to the Dean Look Foundation and that he’d take care of it from there.

Needless to say, Look never got the check, but check out this story:

“So recently, I take my son-in-law down to a Hall of Fame banquet in Detroit and who should be there, but Ditka,” Look told me. “I took my son-in-law over and introduced him, and Mike told him some stories from back in the day.”

I asked Look if Ditka told his son-in-law “the bet” story.

“He did. He told him that he almost had to pay his father-in-law $1,000 one time. That was a classic.”

Who said the NFL is the No Fun League?