National Football Foundation

It's hard enough to imagine how many yards or miles a football official runs up and down a field during a game. Try a season. Or, in the case of David M. Parry, try 14 college and 15 pro seasons. Then add on 20 years of college basketball officiating. To China and back? The moon? You won't find an estimate here. Just know that's a lot of exercise. And a lot of expertise and heaps of dedication.

David Parry's expertise and his extraordinary contributions to college football throughout a devoted officiating career have earned him the National Football Foundation's Outstanding Official Award for 1999. The award's citation reads, 'designed to honor an outstanding official who has demonstrated sportsmanship, integrity, character, and contribution to the sport of college football." David Parry has demonstrated those qualities and more. He is truly an official's official, both on the field and behind a desk.

For the past three years, Parry has been the NCAA national coordinator for football officiating. He is the first person to hold that job. When the job was created by the NCAA, the goal was to find the very best person to fill the role. Parry was the person and he now oversees 20 Division I-A and I-AA conferences and the work of over 1,000 college officials.

As Parry sees it, "the challenge is to achieve national uniformity, consistency. standardization and common philosophy for all NCAA college officiating." Among the things the task calls for is the organization of annual meetings, the development of seminars aimed at improving the mechanics of officiating and helping conference supervisors prepare their own officiating clinics.

He is in constant communication with supervisors updating interpretations and is the primary individual addressing officiating concerns during the course of a season. When conference commissioners or the media call, he answers. In other words, when it comes to college football officiating, the buck stops right on Parry's desk.

A lot of what Parry does is educational. He develops videos and play-situation tapes to enhance the performance levels of officials. The tapes are shown worldwide. He conducts clinics throughout the United States and also explains the "Rules of the Game" on regional and national television through vignettes that are sponsored by State Farm.

He is also responsible for revising the NCCA Football Officiating Seven Man Mechanics Manual and the NCAA Rules book. All rule change proposals are addressed by him in consultation with the NCAA Football Rules Committee. He is also a member of the NCAA Football Certification Sub-Committee and makes the officiating assignments for the four special pre-season games and the 22 post-season bowl games. He's proud of his record. Among Parry's accomplishments last year alone, he cites the use of seven man mechanics in all Division I-A and I-AA conferences beginning in 1998, better cooperation among conference supervisors, increased compensation for bowl officials, an upgraded supervisors directory, position letters on officials uniforms and expediting NFL officiating changes to cooperate more fully with college officiating.

Before Parry got this big job, he had a big job at the Big Ten. Parry became Big Ten Supervisor of Football Officials in 1990 after Gene Calhoun retired. He was a ground breaking administrator there, as he has been at the NCAA. Under Parry, the Big Ten was the first conference to have post-game tape review. The qualitative analysis system of official's performances, which he created, became the national standard. He also created weekly highlight tapes showing about 100 plays to better train officials and he also established a technical adviser program which utilized former NFL officials, as well as veteran college officials to instruct and evaluate current officials.

Aside from his 15-year NFL career, Parry was a Mid-American Conference official for six years and spent eight as an official for the Indiana College Conference. And there was a time Parry even played the game. It was at Wabash College where he got his degree in 1957. His name now resides in that school's Athletic Hall of Fame.