Jim Tunney, the legendary NFL official known as the dean of referees, died Thursday at 95.
A cause of death was not announced.
NBC rules analyst and former NFL official Terry McAulay called Tunney “an absolute legend of the game,” during Sunday’s Packers-Seahawks game with broadcaster Cris Collinsworth adding that he was a “first-class guy.”
Tunney worked over 400 NFL games from 1960 to 1990, including serving as a ref for three Super Bowls.
“In the world of officiating, Jim Tunney is Babe Ruth,” CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz told the LA Times earlier this year.
Tunney worked in some of the most famous weather-impacted games including the Ice Bowl in Green Bay for the 1967 NFL title and the Fog Bowl in Chicago during the 1988 playoffs.
“Jim Tunney is in our space really the first referee who had to embrace television,” said former NFL referee Gene Steratore. “He projected himself into our living rooms to make some sense of what those guys in the striped shirts were doing. And he did it in the way that was digestible.”
Perhaps his most famous call was ruling a Packers field goal attempt by Don Chandler in the 1965 playoffs good — though it was possibly wide right. Green Bay tied the game and beat Don Shula’s Colts in overtime.
“We started out as adversaries,” Tunney said of Shula.
“He said, ‘I never want to argue with you. Every time you came over to the sidelines and we had a dispute, you always won.’ I would tell him, ‘I had to win. I was representing the league, I wasn’t representing you.’”
But in their retirement, the legendary official and the coach with the most all-time wins became golfing buddies and would watch football together.
“He still thought it was wide,” Tunney said. “I’d tell him, ‘If you had won that game, you would have won 348 instead of 347. You’d have to change all those hats and logos.’ We kidded about that for years.”
Tunney also became friends with John Madden, who wrote the foreword for Tunney’s book “Impartial Judgement.”
Tunney was also the first ref named to the All-Madden team.
While working for the NFL he spent his weekdays as a high school principal.
“School was out on Friday afternoon and the next morning I’d get on a plane at LAX and fly to Detroit or Green Bay or Miami or someplace else by myself,” Tunney said.
His students often had feedback.
“They’d come back on Monday morning and say, ‘Oh, you sure screwed up that play,” he recalled. “I’d just laugh and say, ‘Yeah, I probably did.’ ”
Tunney’s father worked as a football official.
Tunney graduated from Occidental College and became a high school teacher and coach.
To pick up some extra money he began working prep and junior college football games before moving up to the Pacific Coast Conference.
In 1960, he had offers to officiate from the AFL and NFL but chose the latter for stability.
He and his wife Linda had six children and 16 grandchildren.
Asked what he wanted his legacy to be, Tunney said, “Every game when I walked off the field in the locker room I said to myself, ‘Did I leave this game better than I found it?’ If [yes is the answer], then I’ve succeeded.”
