Jim Daopoulos

Jim Daopoulos arrived in Kentucky to pursue his basketball dreams, but it was football that ultimately led him in a different direction.

Born and raised in Marlboro, Massachusetts, Daopoulos was the proud son of Greek immigrants and a standout basketball player at Marlboro High School. He continued his roundball career at Leicester Junior College in nearby Worcester, where the Minutemen advanced all the way to the NJCAA tournament in Hutchinson, KS in 1966.

After finishing his two-year basketball career in junior college, Daopoulos headed south to walk-on to Adolph Rupp’s University of Kentucky basketball team. However, he quickly realized the talent gap on a Wildcats roster stacked with top-tier players, and his basketball dream came to an end.

Daopoulos, a Physical Education major at the University of Kentucky, was encouraged by friends to explore officiating. After taking a couple of officiating classes at UK he began his journey in the field. Over the next seven years, he steadily advanced starting with intramural games and progressing through club, junior high, high school, and small college levels. His first major opportunity came when the Ohio Valley Conference brought him on board. His performance in the OVC caught the attention of the Southeastern Conference, which hired him in 1979. After working in the SEC for a decade, Daopoulos received the call to join the NFL.

Daopoulos’s NFL debut was memorable for all the wrong reasons. In his very first game, he made his first call by throwing a flag on a Houston Oilers defender for clipping. The Oilers were coached by the flamboyant Jerry Glanville, one of the league’s most colorful personalities at the time. Glanville erupted at the rookie official, famously telling him that NFL means “Not For Long” if he kept making calls like that. The exchange was caught on video and went viral, racking up millions of views among football fans over the years.

Over the course of his eleven-year career as an NFL back judge and umpire, Daopoulos officiated 225 games, including Super Bowl XXXIII, four Wild Card matchups, two Divisional Playoffs, and a Conference Championship. His excellence on the field, along with his strong leadership and mentoring skills, caught the attention of the league office in New York. In 2000, he was promoted to NFL Supervisor of Officials, a position in which he oversaw the hiring, training, mentoring, supervision, evaluation, and assignment of NFL officials. He also managed officiating operations for NFL Europe and the World League of American Football. Daopoulos served in that role for twelve years before retiring from the league.

Following his retirement from the NFL, Daopoulos became one of television’s first rules analysts, spending five years with ESPN and NBC. He provided real-time insights and explanations of officiating decisions during game broadcasts.

Jim Daopoulos remains active in the football community, continuing to share his expertise through commentary and analysis on officiating-related topics.

Images provided by Jim Daopoulos.