Mike Wilmoth.

by Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Next Saturday, the Eight-man Division I Kansas Football State Championship game will be played featuring Little River vs. Meade in Newton. 

There will be players, coaches, cheerleaders, fans, media sorts, curious onlookers, and workers there to help crown a state champion. It will be a big deal.

And, somewhere, to the annoyance of average fans will be five men dressed in white and black with whistles. That would be the five-person officiating crew. Little River and Meade fans alike will view them suspiciously and maybe with disdain. For if they lose it is their fault. If they win, they overcame the officiating.

The five-man officiating crew for the eight-man division 1 championship next Saturday.

Yet this five-man crew – three from Wellington – has the most important job on the field: making sure the game is played fairly. And for the white-hat elderly fellow of this particular crew, this game means even more.

After 46 years of officiating between 1,500 and 2,000 games, Mike Wilmoth will be retiring. Saturday is his last game. 

“I had two goals left in my officiating career,” Wilmoth said. “I wanted to officiate in Div. 1 college football and I wanted to officiate in an eight-man state championship. I’ll accomplish one of two of those goals next Saturday.” 

For Wilmoth, who teaches history during the day at Wellington High School, DI college football is the only level he has not officiated. He has officiated some junior varsity DI games, and has done plenty of scouting at that level.

“I just have never been asked,” Wilmoth said. “Of course I would have loved to have done it, but it was never meant to be.” 

But in a way, why does it matter? His resume is a Who’s Who list of accomplishments even for the oldest of refs. There was that month-long stint when he became an NFL official. Then there were hundreds of DII college games, NAIA, varsity high school, junior varsity, junior high, arena football, and little league.

Click to enlarge.

There was also basketball and baseball. But his true love was in football. 

“For one thing it is outdoors,” Wilmoth said why football is his favorite. “There is also some control you don’t have in other sports. You can throw the flag and confer with your fellow officials when making a call. In basketball, a call is made on the fly.”

This year Wilmoth made the most important call of his career. He decided to retire.

“My knees and hips aren’t as good, my eyes don’t focus like they used to,” he said. “I don’t run like I used to. I don’t react like I used to. And when you have friends in the stands pointing that out, you know it is time for retirement.” 

Now it is his turn to get in the stands and boo the refs – if he so chooses. 

Mike with son Brandon Wilmoth.

The beginning 

One would argue, Wilmoth was born to referee. His dad was an official. His son Brandon officiates. And Wilmoth started officiating barely out of high school. 

He got his start officiating when his father became a principal at a high school, and he couldn’t officiate a game due to other obligations. So his son, a freshman at Allen Community College, decided to fill in. 

“It was good money for a college student,” Wilmoth said. “It sure beat stocking shelves at a grocery store.” 

His first high school football game was in Colony High School in an 11-man game in northeast Kansas where he lived. He remembers that game like yesterday. 

“The other day the guys were talking about this playoff game we had officiated last year and how it went into overtime,” Wilmoth said. “I couldn’t for the life of me remember that game. But I could remember that Colony game in 1976 and everything that happened.” 

There is little doubt the game of football especially on the high school level was much different then — from its formation to how the game is played. 

“The physicality,” Wilmoth said is the main difference. “Football players were tougher back in the day – and that is not to insult today’s players. It is more about how the game has changed.”

He continued:

“When I started officiating, a player could plant his helmet in the sternum of his opponent and take the crown to the chin. That was perfectly acceptable. Today, if you pulled that, you might not be playing football again.” 

Wilmoth is careful not to favor one era over the other. Everything changes and the key to officiating is changing with the times. 

Take, for instance, the holding penalty. A “hold” back in the day meant you were using your hands in some way to restrict the oncoming defender. Nowadays not only can you use your hands but you could provide a little dance. Holding is now about technique and much more subjective today.

But his philosophy for holding has always been consistent.

“If the defender can get to the quarterback and make a sack, then you didn’t do a very good job of holding. I’m not going to throw the flag.” 

The formations in high school ball are a huge change. In the early 1980s, Kansas high schools were playing 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust football: I formations, two backs in the backfield, traps, dives. What is a wide receiver?

“Nowadays, not only are you seeing three wide-out sets, but you might not see one back in the backfield,” Wilmoth said. “There is continual motion, players in pro formations. Sometimes I think the coaches are doing too much.” 

The NFL 

Wilmoth may have never officiated a big DI college game, but in 2012, the regular NFL officials had a lockout. Wilmoth got that dream call every official would like to have. They needed him to officiate in the NFL.

For a little more than a month, Wilmoth suddenly was hired to officiate on football’s biggest stage as a replacement ref. 

He was a lines judge and for three weeks in the regular season, he was in charge of making sure teams offenses didn’t fall start or defenses jump offsides. He got to officiate the first game Peyton Manning played as a Denver Bronco quarterback, and he reffed at a Green Bay Packer game on Thursday night. 

He became a media star.

“I tell you what. I got more than my 15-minutes of fame that month,” Wilmoth said. “I got to fly first class, stay in the best hotels. A far cry from what I’m used to traveling to high school and small college games.”

Nevertheless, while the experience was great it brought a lot of stress on his family, he said.

“For the regular officials, if they make a mistake, it is human,” Wilmoth said. “For us replacements, it was inexperience.”

Still, Wilmoth did not renege on his high school duties during that time. On Thursday he was officiating in Green Bay. The next night he was in Hutchinson for a high school football game. 

The lockout was settled after week 3 after the infamous “Fail Mary” play between the Seattle Seahawks and Packers. 

Wilmoth would never officiate in the NFL again which was fine with him.

“For a while, that’s all anyone would talk with me about,” he said. “Then the subject came up maybe weekly, then monthly. Now it only comes up if someone hasn’t seen me in 10 or 15 years.” 

Reflections 

Looking back, Wilmoth said officiating and the game of football as a whole, are about relationships.

“If I could give one piece of advice to young coaches, it is this,” he said. “Question to learn. Don’t question to rebut.” 

Wilmoth said that separates a good coach from a mediocre one. Every coach has a right to question a call and officials are all too human. But if the ultimate goal of the coach is to humiliate the ref or deflect the attention on poor coaching decisions, then he/she isn’t getting better.

Officiating is the same way.  

“I have worked with officials who have been in the business more than 20 years who still ask questions. I have also worked with young people just starting out who already have all the answers.” 

Wilmoth said he has also been on the sidelines enough that the second he steps on a field, he knows a good football team from a bad one without even checking their records. It is how a team warms up. The good teams are always buttoned up, properly dressed, in unison. The bad teams are the ones with untucked shirts and wearing purple socks with red uniforms. If you have a kid back-talking an adult, chances are he is playing for a bad team. 

Wilmoth said fans may not be any more violent than they used to be but they are more vocal, angry, and have become self-appointed experts.

“This is due to the cycle of 24-hour social media where everyone thinks they know everything,” Wilmoth said.

But despite the normal abuse that goes the officials’ way, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

He will remember the high school rivalries like Salina Central vs. Salina South or Bishop Carroll vs. Kapaun on Friday night. 

He will remember the long DII college football trips where he gets up at 3 in the morning and may not get back until 1 a.m.

And most of all, he will remember the camaraderie with his friends. Officiating is a tight circle of friends. 

As far as the future, Wilmoth is going to sit and watch his grandchildren play ball. He may put on a clinic or two. 

“I don’t think I want to become a commissioner or anything like that,” Wilmoth said. “After almost 2,000 games, people are probably a little tired of me.” 

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