Cashion told the best tales of calling games big, small
COLLEGE STATION — Red Cashion, one of the NFL’s most enthusiastic and admired referees, once described how he hoped his final appearance before an attentive crowd would play out.
“I love the thought that somebody expressed about a funeral,” Cashion said in an extended visit on WTAW radio in College Station about six years ago. “I (don’t) want to get there spic and span — I just want to get there pretty well worn out.”
Cashion, born in College Station and a 1953 graduate of Texas A&M, did exactly that, passing away on Sunday at the age of 87.
“Humble to the end,” said author Rusty Burson, who in 2012 helped Cashion pen a book on his colorful career. “Whether he was officiating the Super Bowl in New Orleans in 1986 with the ‘Super Bowl Shuffle’ Chicago Bears, or refereeing a high school game in Franklin, Texas.”
The tales from both fields are exceptional. Cashion, best known for his exuberant “First Down!” exclamation over an NFL career spanning 25 years, built such a rapport with players and coaches they treated him like one of their own.
“Walter Payton would be at the bottom of the pile after a carry,” Burson said of the Chicago Bears’ Hall of Fame running back, “and Red would be trying to spot the ball. Walter would reach out and untie his shoestrings.”
This happened more than once. So did Cashion, long before his NFL days, enjoying a homemade pie after a long Friday night in Franklin.
“The moms of the players ran a concession stand, and they would make homemade pies,” Burson recalled. “They would save some of the pies for the officials after games, because they knew how much Red and his gang loved them.”
Cashion didn’t have quite as delicious a memory of Somerville on the other side of College Station from Franklin, after the Yeguas lost a close game and their fans blamed the young, wide-eyed referee calling the action.
“They were rocking his car in the parking lot,” Burson said. “Red told me, ‘I don’t think I ever refereed another game in Somerville.’”
Fast forward a few decades to 1986 in New Orleans, and with Cashion refereeing his first Super Bowl.
“After the coin toss I ran down to where I was supposed to be for the kickoff — and realized I was at the wrong end of the field,” Cashion recalled with a chuckle to WTAW. “I had a little problem, in front of about 87,000 fans in the Superdome, millions more on TV and my supervisor in the press box. All I had to do was get to the other end without being seen.”
Then Cashion glanced around and saw a fellow Aggie in New England Patriots kicker Tony Franklin, preparing to kick off the nation’s most celebrated and watched sporting event.
“Tony said, ‘Red, what in the world are you doing down here?’ ” Cashion recalled. “I told him, ‘Tony, if you want to know the truth, I’m at the wrong end of the field. So if I talk to you long enough they’ll think that’s something special for the Super Bowl, and then I can go on down there where I belong.’ ”
Franklin shrugged and asked Cashion how things were in College Station. Cashion responded that things in College Station were good.
“So we talked about College Station for a few minutes,” Cashion said. “And then I trotted to the other end of the field.”
After the game the then-NFL director of officials, Art McNally, approached Cashion.
“I just want you to know that little extra of talking to the kicker before the game — that was a good touch,” McNally told Cashion.
“Sometimes,” said Cashion, wrapping up the amusing anecdote, “you’ve just got to be a little lucky.”
Following his retirement from the NFL in 1997, Cashion continued his successful insurance business in Bryan-College Station. Meantime, my first job out of Sam Houston State in 1994 was at the Bryan-College Station Eagle.
I was an obituary writer, copy editor, city halls reporter and then A&M sports beat writer for The Eagle, and a young guy who could use some encouragement when a letter arrived out of the blue in my Eagle mailbox.
It was a card from a celebrated, salt-of-the-earth NFL referee I really only knew through TV: “Brent — Love your work, Red Cashion, NFL #43.” It was quite a welcome to College Station.
Sometimes, you’re lucky to cross paths with a person like Red Cashion.