Selection
The NFL's highest-rated official at each position is selected to work the Super Bowl. This is determined by the league using an evaluation system to grade each official's calls during the year. However, only officials who have worked in the league for at least five seasons and have previously worked during the playoffs are eligible to officiate in a Super Bowl.
This has not always been the case. From Super Bowl I to Super Bowl IV, when the game was the "AFL (American Football League)-NFL World Championship Game", the officiating crews consisted of members from both leagues. Then for Super Bowl XXXVIII and Super Bowl XXXIX, the NFL selected the highest rated crew during the regular season. This was a reaction to several officiating mistakes during the 2002-03 playoffs, and the league felt that preserving the familiarity and cohesiveness of the officiating crews during the postseason might reduce the errors.
Read more about this topic: List Of Super Bowl Officials
Famous quotes containing the word selection:
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)
“When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny”
—Archie Randolph Ammons (b. 1926)
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)