Lo Van Pham will be the first Asian American to officiate in the NFL.
The NFL announced Pham’s hiring alongside 9 other new officials in a press release on Tuesday. All 10 officials had previously worked on officiating teams within the Power 5 college football conferences.
Pham was born in Vietnam. When he was seven, his family left the country as refugees, briefly living in a refugee camp in the Philippines. In 1979, the family moved to Amarillo, Texas, according to the Bleacher Report.
Pham discovered football when he was young through a non-profit organization called Kids, Inc.
“Football taught me to do a task for the greater good of the overall team goal,” Pham said in an interview with Amarillo Globe-News. “It taught me a lot of discipline and doing your job when it came time to do it.”
Pham volunteered to officiate Pee Wee football games after graduating from college, Amarillo Globe-News reports. When he returned to Amarillo, he worked as a back judge for the Amarillo chapter.
In 2006, he earned the chance to officiate in the Lone Star Conference. By 2007, he was officiating NCAA Division 1 football. He officiated for the Southland Conference, the now-defunct Western Athletic Conference and the Mountain West, before landing a job in the Big 12 in 2015, Amarillo Globe-News reports.
“You have to be in the right place at the right time and be seen by the right individual, but you also have to have talent, and Lo does have that talent,” Phillip Woodburn, a longtime official who helped mentor Pham, told Amarillo Globe-News. “He just has that knack. You didn’t have to teach him a whole lot of mechanics. Lo is no dummy.”
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