Last year’s Super Bowl referee and the league’s most visible official will work this weekend’s conference championship games.
According to FootballZebras.com, Bill Vinovich and Ed Hochuli will lead the all-star crews of officials (as opposed to their regular season crews) in the Panthers-Cardinals and Patriots-Broncos games.
They haven’t worked playoff games yet this year, though they were alternates last weekend, on site at divisional games in case someone was injured.
The Super Bowl will be called by one of the referees who worked a divisional round game last weekend, from the pool including Clete Blakeman, Tony Corrente, Terry McAulay and Craig Wrolstad.
The league gives playoff assignments to 10 of the 17 referees, with only the Super Bowl ref working twice in the postseason.
And with Vinovich and Hochuli getting the semifinals, we can also narrow down the guys who ostensibly are the seven lowest-rated crews.
The seven referees who did not get playoff assignments this year are Brad Allen, Walt Anderson, Jerome Boger, Carl Cheffers, John Hussey, Pete Morelli and Jeff Triplette.
