NFL

Mike Pereira’s unlikely rise at FOX

Mike Pereira has come accustomed to being recognized.

“I’ve had more people come up to me and say, ‘I know you’ and then I sit there and you are flattered …,” said Pereira, now in his fourth season as FOX’s rules analyst.

“Then they are like, ‘I got it! You are Barry Weiss from “Storage Wars.’’ ”

So, household name he’s not, but most football fans know him well. He is the bearer of good or bad news — explaining an intricate rule and cluing the viewer in to what will likely happen as he or she waits through a sometimes excruciating replay review.

When hired in 2010 he wasn’t sure exactly what he would be doing after spending two years as a side judge in the NFL and eight years as the league’s vice president of officiating.

In his first Sunday on the job with Fox, Calvin Johnson appeared to catch a game-winning touchdown for the Lions against the Bears. But the officials called it incomplete on the field and when they went to review it, Pereira came on Fox’s screen to interpret the situation, which was Johnson not having possession all the way through the catch.

“Nobody believed me, but then they came back and confirmed it,” Pereira said. “Then once I recovered, got my breath back, after laying on the floor hoping they’d agree with what I said, it led to a realization that it was a pretty good role for everybody.

“I remember [Fox NFL Insider] Jay Glazer saying, ‘you hit a grand slam on your first day.’ Guess what? I could have struck out on my first day. If they would have overruled it and turned it into a touchdown I might have been back in Sacramento hitting golf balls. It might have been the shortest career of anybody.”

Pereira’s role goes beyond Sunday afternoons. He is a regular contributor to “Fox Football Daily” on Fox Sports, writes for FoxSports.com on controversial calls and makes tapes and notes for the network’s other broadcasters to keep them as informed as possible.

“My hope was to teach and get fans to understand the rules and the officiating philosophy a little bit better, so they could enjoy the game a little bit more,” Pereira said. “Officiating is not a positive to anyone — a fan or a player — it’s a frustration.”

And Pereira does not accomplish that alone. His mini-command center off to the side in Fox’s studio has 10 TVs for all the games on Sunday afternoon.

“I hire ex-college officials or current college or high schools officials and each one of them monitors a game,” he said. “So, if there are eight games going on at once, I have each monitoring and charting every play of a game and they alert me if something comes up.”

There’s another Fox employee that monitors the Quantrel system, which allows Pereira to go back and see any of the plays his own officials flagged for him. And then he goes on the air for a quick 15-20 second explainer if needed or notes the information for future reference. He has become a mainstay at Fox, even if he’ll never be as famous as Barry Weiss.

“I must admit I did get Barry’s phone number and texted him to see if anybody had stopped him and mistaken him for me,” Pereira said.

“His one word response was, ‘No.’ I was so deflated when I got that.”