National Football Foundation

If there was an All-America team for college football officials, Robert "Bobby" Gaston would no doubt be All-Time First String.

He started officiating high school games in 1950, began working Southeastern Conference games in 1957 and hung up his cleats after the 1982 Orange Bowl game which saw Clemson beat Nebraska for the national championship.

But he has never hung up his love for the game or for officiating. Today, he is coordinator of football officiating for the SEC, a position he has had since 1988.

"Bobby" Gaston is honored by the National Football Foundation for the impact and influence he has had on college football officiating during a long and distinguished career.

Gaston's first college Bowl game was the 1944 Sugar Bowl, but then he was playing, not officiating. He played wingback in Hall of Fame coach W.A. Alexander's Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets' single-wing offense. His backfield coach was another man who would also end up in the Hall of Fame, Bobby Dodd.

A month after that Bowl Game, Gaston traded in his football togs for a World War II Naval uniform. He spent two years in the Navy and, as a landing craft boat commander, he saw action in the Pacific. After his service hitch, he returned to Georgia Tech and graduated in 1947. For eight years he ran a Texaco and Firestone dealer franchise. Then, in 1956, he decided to try the insurance business. It turned out to be a good decision. By 1968, he was a vice-president for Insurance Agents, Inc. In 1976, he opened his own company, Advanced Insurers, Inc., where he is still president. A very successful businessman, the Atlanta Insurance Women's Club one year named him "Boss of the Year."

But through all of these years, it has been football that has given his life that special spark.

It was a friend and Georgia Tech teammate, Red Eaves, himself a high-school football official, who suggested that Gaston might enjoy officiating. He did and the two friends worked a lot of games together.

After a few years covering high school games, both Gaston and his buddy Eaves moved up to working Southeastern Conference games. He was accepted the first time he applied and went on to become one of the game's most prominent officials, not only in the South but nationwide.

During the years he roamed the gridiron, Gaston officiated 19 Bowl games. He even worked "hurt." One year he broke his arm working a preseason scrimmage. For the first six weeks you could easily pick him out from the rest of the crew. He was the one running around with the cast.

As SEC coordinator of football officiating, it is Gaston's responsibility to select, train, assign and evaluate all conference officials. All supervisors do that, but Gaston has introduced some unusual wrinkles.

There's the conditioning program which includes a stress test, a mile-and-a-half run, flexibility and agility drills. After completing the rugged tests, two officials found problems they didn't know existed until they went through Gaston's program. One official underwent a heart bypass, the other underwent an angioplasty procedure.

And there are Gaston's video tapes. Each week he puts together a 25-minute reel of good calls, questionable calls and "controversial" calls. Gaston adds an audio track pointing out the problems. Those tapes are sent to the officials' room in the stadiums each game day and the crews look at them before they take the field. The object is to make them even more alert when they go to work. Gaston ends each with a motivational pep-talk and signs off with something like, "Hope you're not the star of next week's tape."

It's an arduous job juggling his business life, his football duties and his private life. "If you don't have a supportive family, you have a problem," he says. "I couldn't have done it without my wife, Gail." They've been married 21 years and when he was away, she ran the business. When he was working games, his wife and daughters would go with him.

As far as Bobby Gaston is concerned, this honor is as much his wife's as his. "We sat down and cried for about five minutes when Archie Manning called to tell me," he says. "You can't imagine how touched I was."