Hudson has the back for Pac-12 football

His best day on the football field is the one where you didn’t notice him at all.

And that’s just fine with Steve Hudson of Coeur d’Alene, who has been a back judge for Pac-10/12 Conference football games since 1999.

On Tuesday, he was hard to miss as the guest speaker for the North Idaho College Booster Club luncheon in The Coeur d’Alene Resort Bay Room.

“It’s interesting to me always how I can go out in front of a crowd of 1,000 people, throw my flag, run up to the referee and tell him I’ve got a foul with a bunch of people booing and screaming at me, and it’s not a problem,” Hudson said. “The announcers are making fun of me, and saying the call is horrible, it doesn’t bother me. But I come in front of a crowd like this and I’m nervous as hell.”

THERE IS a limited amount of actual down time for an official these days, especially for one in a major conference like the Pac-12, as Hudson explained during Tuesday’s meeting.

“March 1, I get a DVD in the mail with 100 to 150 plays on it that pertains to my position as a back judge,” said Hudson, owner of the popular Hudson’s Hamburgers in downtown Coeur d’Alene. “You look at things like pass interference and calls like that. And we’re trying to be consistent. We’ll go over 30 to 40 plays each conference call and then move on to scrimmages and I’ll go to Washington State and Eastern and help them learn what not to do so they don’t get those fouls during crunch time. Around Memorial Day, we start studying the rules. We’ll do that for six or eight weeks and do that on Monday nights. In July, we’ll do a physical training exam and if we’re not where we were last year, we’ll get a look.”

His routine changes a little bit the week of games.

“Get on a plane Friday morning and travel,” Hudson said. “We have dinner at 6, it’s not mandatory, but most of the guys make it to dinner that night. Then if we have a day game, we’ve got meetings at 8 p.m. and go over film from the week before. And we’ll look at every play from the last week, and you’re graded on each play. Sometimes it’s nothing and sometimes there’s a hold or low block that we missed. If I miss a pass interference or something, they’ll send it to my supervisor and then we’re graded on Wednesdays. All week, we’re learning so what we screwed up last Saturday, we don’t screw up tomorrow.”

Once the game is over, they’ll relax and wait to start the process again the following week.

“You finally get out to do the game, but you hardly sleep that night,” Hudson said. “We’re all given iPads with the game on them, but nobody is allowed to look at them after the game is over. You can talk about the game, but you can’t look at the iPad because you want to enjoy the night and go to bed.”

Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday I don’t sleep,” Hudson said. “Wednesday, we’re graded and all that comes out. At the end of the season, they compile the grades and if we’re lucky enough, the biggest game we can work is the Pac-12 Championship game.”

The 2016 season was one to remember for Hudson as far as his career goes.

“I was fortunate enough to have a heck of a year,” Hudson said. “My boss told me I had over 2,400 decisions last year, and of those I got every one right. But I know I didn’t, but he said I did, and that’s all that matters. So I got the Pac-12 Championship game and was lucky enough to get the Fiesta Bowl with Clemson and Ohio State. I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with some fantastic guys over the years.”

Biggest games

“I don’t remember many games, but the biggest honor I’ve had was working in the Rose Bowl with Roger (Stewart, another local ref with extensive college experience),” Hudson said. “That was kind of big for two guys from North Idaho going from doing Junior Tackle to the Rose Bowl. That was really one of the highlights. I did two basketball (powers), playing football in a baseball field. That one was Indiana and Duke, and that game was a blast. One of the neatest things I’ve gotten to do was Washington at Notre Dame, and that was like going to Jerusalem.”

HUDSON EVEN took time to answer some quick questions following his speech.

Is it true you get paid by the flag?

“That’s something we try really hard to learn,” Hudson said. “Honestly, we don’t get paid by the flag. We really don’t want to throw our flags. If we have zero flags in the game, it’s been great. If nobody knows we were there, it’s been great. We try not to be any part of it instead of making sure we put the ball on the line to get to the next snap.”

What are you doing tonight, and what’s your big game this weekend?

“Tonight, we’ve got a rules study meeting at 5 p.m. to watch some film,” Hudson said. “One of the big things we’re going through right now is targeting. It needs to be taken out of the game. We need to get kids off the heads. If we don’t, college football won’t be around in 10 years because we can’t afford the lawsuits. It used to be that a runner was not a defenseless player, but we had three targeting calls, two were on and one was off, and I thought all three should have been taken off. We need to get it out of the game. My big game this week, and I can hardly wait, is in Kellogg this week (vs. West Valley, as his Pac-12 crew does not have a game this week). And they don’t care who I am and what I do on Saturdays.”

And as long as he’s getting the calls right, it will remain that way.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JECdAPress.