It's Not All Black and White: From Junior High to the Sugar Bowl, an Inside Look at Football Through the Eyes of An Official

Mike Liner

elo 2009 · Myyjä: Simon and Schuster

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From junior high football games to the Sugar Bowl with a national championship up for grabs, Mike Liner has seen it all in football. President and CEO of a bank by day, Liner has been a Texas football official on Fridays and Saturdays for the past 35 years. It’s Not All Black and White offers a view of college football seen through a different set of eyes, the eyes of an official. Liner takes readers through the story of his ascension up the officiating hierarchy and describes the bumps in the road he encountered along the way. In doing do, he puts a human face on an aspect of football that all too often is dehumanized -- the officiating of the game.

With a foreword by SEC Coordinator of Football Officials Rogers Reding and an afterword by Tim Millis, Executive Director, NFL Referees Association, It’s Not All Black and White lifts the curtain on big-time college football, revealing what Liner saw as he observed it and why the game means so much to him. Liner also recounts important lessons he learned through football about life as a business leader, as a family man and as someone whose faith has grown through the years.

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Mike Liner has spent 35 years as a junior high school, high school and college football official, working prep games before becoming a Lone Star Conference official and officiating small-college games in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. He then became one of a small group of men responsible for officiating Southwest Conference games and was one of only a dozen SWC football officials to be invited into the Big 12 Conference when that league was born in 1996. He retired from officiating Big 12 games after the 2006 Gator Bowl, having worked hundreds of games in venues across the country and establishing a reputation as one of the best line judges in America. Liner served two years on the board of directors of the Texas Association of Sports Officials and is a recipient of the Outstanding Football Official Award from the Texas Tech chapter of the National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame. Recently retired as President and Chief Executive Officer of City Bank, Texas, a Lubbock-based bank that, under his guidance, has steadily grown to include several hundred employees with offices across Texas and in New Mexico, Liner has a distinguished history as a business leader and civic leader. He is a graduate of Southwestern Oklahoma State University, the SMU Southwestern Graduate School of Banking, the Texas Tech School of Banking and the East Texas State University Bank Operations Institute. In addition to his professional career, Liner remains active in the banking business, serving as a consultant to City Bank, Texas, and still officiating the occasional high school game. He has a long track record of community service, working with organizations, including the Plains Cotton Growers Association, Texas Boys Ranch, Children’s Home of Lubbock, My Father’s House, University Medical Center, and the Boy Scouts of America. He lives in Lubbock, TX.