NFL Referees Are Lawyers And Engineers — Here’s Why Running Two Careers Is The New Reality
(SeaPRwire) –
By: Logan Pierce
Nobody talks about this anymore, but the NFL’s 121 officials are the quiet proof that your career doesn’t have to be a straight line. These people make $205,000 on average just whistling through football games from August to January. Yet most of them clock into entirely different full-time jobs the next morning. This is not a side hustle story. It is a structural shift in how professionals build their lives.
Take Clete Blakeman, a personal injury attorney in Nebraska. Brad Rogers teaches business at Texas Tech. Shawn Hochuli advises clients on their finances in California. Shawn Smith has spent thirty years in auditing alongside his NFL work since joining the league in 2015. Adrian Hill holds down a 16-year refereeing tenure while serving as a principal software engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. These are not hobbies. These are disciplined, demanding professions pursued simultaneously. The NFL itself acknowledges officials spend over 30 hours a week studying video and the rulebook during the season. They meet with crews. They review supervisor evaluations. Officiating alone reads like a second full-time job.
The entry barriers tell the real story here. Prospective NFL officials need at least a decade of football officiating experience. Five of those years must come at the varsity college or minor professional level. Candidates must be in excellent physical condition and belong to an accredited officials association or have played or coached football previously. If those boxes are checked, the application process is remarkably simple. Candidates mail their collegiate officiating schedules from the past three seasons to the NFL’s Manhattan headquarters. This is not a gate closed to outsiders. It is a gate that demands serious prior investment.
What connects a NASA software engineer to an Olympic alpine skier who works as a barista between competitions? Keely Cashman represented Team USA in both the 2022 and 2026 Winter Olympics while grinding coffee shifts in small-town California. Curling silver medalists Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin work as a lab technician and a real estate agent when they are not competing. Thiesse put it plainly. She feels grateful for the job that pays the bills while she pursues Olympic curling.
The data supports what we already feel in our bones. An EY study found that 39% of Gen Z workers hold both a job and a side hustle. Underemployment is rising. A difficult job market and the inflation of living costs are pushing people toward portfolio careers whether they want to or not. Ken Jeong did it differently. He practiced medicine during the day and performed comedy at night for years before comedy became his full-time thing. Most people do not get that clean exit. They stay juggling.
Hill sees a lesson here for young people who feel trapped by the idea that they must pick one path. He points out that if someone told a kid they could be a professional football player and a medical doctor, nobody would blink. The implication is clear. The constraint is mostly imaginary. The pressure on these officials is real though. Hill admitted the NFL field brings more stress than any spacecraft decision he has ever made. Twenty million people are watching live. The clock does not stop. A split-second call ripples through stadiums and living rooms instantly. Heart rates spike to the highest point. There is no review window. No measured weighing of alternatives. Just action and consequence in real time.
This is not about passion projects on the side. This is about professionals refusing to accept a narrow definition of success. The NFL’s 10% per-game pay increase in 2026 suggests the league recognizes the value these dual-career individuals bring. But the real story is wider than football. It is about a generation and a workforce that has quietly decided not to choose between disciplines. They are building bridges instead.
Logan Pierce, an independent business researcher and corporate governance writer on Medium, covers work culture and the changing nature of professional identity.