Ed Hochuli is Retiring. Goodbye, Gun Show
What? NO! Say it ain’t so, #85! Ed Hochuli, the most iconic referee in the history of football if not organized sport can’t just up and call it a career like this. Without warning. Without a Derek Jeter-like Farewell Tour. And without explanation. And don’t give me that “He’s 67″ ragtime. When you’re the most virile man in America, 67 is the new 27. Men like Ed Hercules don’t hang up the whistle at that age. They endure. They go out there week in and week out and dominate a field full of younger, bigger, more brutish men like the Alphas they are.
Of course we’ll miss the weekly Gun Show most of all. Ed baring the 24-inch pythons in weather that has lesser men running for their blizzard unis. But for me, the hole in my heart will be shaped like Ed’s legendary talent for over explaining things like he was getting paid by the word:
Those moments of bombastic grandiloquence like the time he used 91 words to describe an incomplete pass:
… a record that will never be broken. Nor should it be.
In all seriousness, when you talk to people in the game, they love Hochuli. Pat McAfee and AJ Hawk told me on numerous occasions on Laces Out that they respect him and will take a guy who explains too much over someone who doesn’t communicate at all any day. And when I was on WEEI with Bill Belichick I once said something sarcastic about Ed and he’d have none of it, saying he was as good an official as he’s worked with. And if he’s good enough for the best coach of all time and the other 2/3 of the greatest trio in the history of podcasting, who am I to argue?
While we’re on the subject, no one will miss Jeff Tripplette, the worst, most inconsistent and incompetent referee in the game. A guy with the demeanor and accent of the creepy sheriff in every horror movie where a carload of teenagers goes to stay in a cabin. If we have to say goodbye to Hercules, at least the loss is offset by getting rid of that old hillbilly too.
But still, we’re going to miss Ed going forward. I’ll just try to imagine that he’s not retiring or planning to put in more time at his law firm. I’m going to believe he’s going out to stud. To impregnate women by the hundreds in order to father a new generation of He Man referees with massive pipes and a talent for loquaciousness unrivaled by officials in sports today. So godspeed, Ed Hochuli. RES85CT.