He was calling offsides and secretly taking a side.
Veteran NFL official Mike Carey recused himself from refereeing Washington Redskins games for the past eight seasons, staging a silent protest against a nickname that he finds unconscionably offensive.
“The league respectfully honored my request not to officiate Washington,” Carey told the Washington Post this week. “It happened sometime after I refereed their playoff game in 2006, I think.”
Notice the name he uses.
“I’ve called them Washington all my life,” he said. “And I will continue to call them Washington.”
Carey, the first African-American referee to work a Super Bowl, retired last winter after 19 seasons and took a job with CBS as a rules analyst. He said he made his request privately to the person in charge of scheduling referees, and was not sure whether Commissioner Roger Goodell was aware of the boycott.
“It just became clear to me that to be in the middle of the field, where something disrespectful is happening, was probably not the best thing for me,” Carey said. “Human beings take social stances. And if you’re respectful of all human beings, you have to decide what you’re going to do and why you’re going to do it.”