Comments (0) Best Sports Trailblazer - 2012
Shannon Eastin, NFL referee
It's hard to imagine a woman officiating the behemoths in the National Football League. But it was hard to believe that a woman would ever officiate the freakishly tall lurches in the National Basketball Association. That was before Violet Palmer started acquitting herself well as an NBA referee in 1997. Now comes Tempe's Shannon Eastin, who's admitted she's nervous about her new role in the previously all-male world of NFL referees, but who's at the same time excited about the challenge. She got her chance as a replacement official employed by the league while a labor dispute festered with regular refs. Point being, nobody knows how long her gig will last, but like Palmer before her, she has lots of experience. Eastin's been calling BS on football players' antics for 16 years as an official, a lot of that time at the college level in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
Palmer has taken her share of abuse from sports talking heads, some calling her the worst ref in NBA history with scant evidence to back that up except that the team in whatever town lost on a controversial call. And, of course, that she's not a guy. In Eastin's case, she's barely gotten started and already she's been declared a joke and a scab. Hang in there, Shannon — you're tough, and you're a pioneer.
