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Super Bowl referee Bill Vinovich started his pro career in the CFL during the U.S. expansion era, came back from near-fatal heart aneurysm

Bill Vinovich, the referee for Sunday's Super Bowl, got his start in professional football in the CFL in 1993. (AP/Rick Osentoski.)
Bill Vinovich, the referee for Sunday's Super Bowl, got his start in professional football in the CFL in 1993. (AP/Rick Osentoski.)

There's going to be a substantial CFL flavour in Sunday's Super Bowl, including former players (Jon Ryan and Chris Matthews on the Seattle Seahawks, Brandon Browner on the New England Patriots) and Canadians drafted by the league at one point (the Seahawks' Luke Willson). One of the most interesting connections will be the man with the whistle, though; referee Bill Vinovich. As Drew Edwards writes, Vinovich's first experience refereeing professional games came in the CFL during the U.S. expansion era in the 1990s:

Vinovich was one of close to a dozen American officials hired by the league when the CFL added U.S.-based franchises starting in 1993. They were trained in the many rule differences — of which three downs versus four is just the most obvious — then mixed with experienced Canadian colleagues and sent to do games on both sides of the border.

Glen Johnson is now the CFL's vice president of officiating but was working as a field judge when Vinovich came into the league. He says that while some of the new American officials struggled with the speed and nuances of the Canadian game, Vinovich caught on quickly.

"He had to learn a whole different set of rules and go out and be professional and he took that very seriously," Johnson said. "He had an eye on the NFL back then and was a guy that within five minutes of meeting him, you knew he had the 'it' factor."

Johnson says that while some of the new officials didn't take the CFL as seriously as they should have — like many American players, they had little understanding of how good the football was — Vinovich realized quickly that the league could play a key role in his development. He used it as a springboard to the NFL, which took him on in 2001.

The CFL was a great experience because it was professional football. It required immediate accountability and provided me with strict scrutiny," Vinovich wrote in an email to The Spectator. "There were weekly training videos and we were graded on every play of every game. The endurance of a 20-game season was a challenge I very much enjoyed."

Vinovich worked in the CFL even after the end of U.S. expansion in 1995, staying in Canadian football for a couple of years afterwards. He then joined the NFL in 2001, and spent three seasons as a side judge and back judge before he was promoted to referee. Challenges still remained for him, however. As Peter King writes at The MMQB, Vinovich almost died in 2007:

Vinovich, a certified public accountant in his other life, was a week clear of tax season in late April 2007, and now it was time to focus on his real passion, being an NFL referee. He was about to enter his fourth season as a ref, after three as an NFL side judge and back judge. Vinovich went to work out one day near his southern California home, and when he came home, his back was killing him. “It actually felt like somebody stuck two knives in my back,” Vinovich said from California the other day. At the hospital his blood pressure skyrocketed. The CAT scan stunned the doctors: He had suffered an “aortic dissection”—a dangerous tear in the interior wall of the descending aorta, the large artery that carries blood from the heart down through the chest. The tear causes blood to pool between the internal and external walls of the aorta.

“They said it was inoperable,” Vinovich said. “I heard them say, ‘The next 48 hours will tell if he’s gonna make it or not.’ ”

Vinovich survived, but doctors initially recommended he stay away from on-field officiating. That led to him working as a NFL replay official for three years. As ESPN's Kevin Seifert writes, though, surgery let him work his way back:

Over the next three years, however, he began feeling better. His doctors theorized that the heavy weightlifting had spiked his blood pressure to 300/200, causing the dissection, and approved a return to conditioning provided he lift no more than half his body weight.

Vinovich felt well enough to begin officiating college basketball, but the NFL's cardiologist consultant refused to clear him to return to the football field. The league sent him to Dr. John Elefteriades, whose cardiology department at Yale was a leading research center on aortic dissections.

Elefteriades recommended surgery in 2010, and the NFL cleared Vinovich to return as a referee in 2012. He was a "swing" official that year who filled in when others had a week off, and he was awarded his own crew in 2013.

"I guess I just knew my body," Vinovich said. "The first couple years, it was strenuous to do exercise, so I was careful. Once I started doing college basketball, I realized I was fine. I wanted to get back into this. It was in my blood. That first game back [in Philadelphia, in 2012], there were tears in my eyes. I couldn't believe it."

That's a remarkable story, and one that shouldn't be forgotten in all the rest of the Super Bowl coverage. Vinovich has turned into an impressive NFL referee, and he and his crew received the highest grades this year. If not for the CFL's U.S. expansion, though, he might never have gotten to that point.

Correction: This piece initially referred to Chris Williams, not Chris Matthews. Williams also recently played in the NFL with the Saints and Bears.