In his life as the vice president of an engineering firm in his native Omaha, Neb., he is known as John Mascarello.
In his other life as a former Kansas University football player who has just become a member of the Big 12 Conference football officiating staff, he is known as “Butch” Mascarello.
Mostly, though, John “Butch” Mascarello is fortunate he still has his life.
A three-year starter at offensive guard for the Jayhawks from 1975 to 1977, Mascarello and KU teammate Dennis Balagna were working for a construction firm during the summer of 1978. On a fateful June morning near 21st and Croco Road in Topeka, Mascarello and Balagna entered a 10-foot ditch that connected two sewage treatment lagoons.
Minutes later, the walls collapsed, spewing mud and clay into the cavity. Balagna died in the accident. Mascarello survived.
“I’ll never, ever forget it,” Mascarello told me. “I’m just darn lucky to be alive. It could have been me. Dennis got knocked off his feet, but I was able to take a couple of steps and was buried to the top of my shoulders.”
Fellow workmen had to extricate both men by hand. Balagna was buried for more than an hour and was pronounced dead at the scene. Mascarello was treated at Stormont-Vail Hospital for a bruised chest and released.
“I was spared for a reason,” Mascarello said. “I know that.”
Now, more than 27 years later and at the age of 50, the former KU offensive lineman, team captain and School of Engineering grad has earned a position as a Big 12 Conference football official.
Like most NCAA Division I-A striped shirts, Mascarello has paid his dues. He began officiating 20 years ago, working lower-classification high school games in Nebraska.
“One of the guys I went to high school with encouraged me to do it,” Mascarello said. “I was having fun doing what I was doing because part of the fun is the camaraderie of working with other officials.”
Eventually, Mascarello advanced to the small-college ranks, throwing flags in the Heart of America Conference and the Nebraska Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, among others.
Three years ago, the Big 12 was short of officials during the nonconference schedule and tapped him to work the Oklahoma-Tulsa game.
“I had that game taped because I figured it would be the only game I would ever work in the Big 12,” he said.
But last year Mascarello received another call and worked as the umpire in the Kansas State-Western Kentucky game in Manhattan. This year he is scheduled to work five Big 12 games, and he’ll probably be assigned to a handful of others to assist in the league’s new replay program.
That’s assuming his good fortune holds. As an umpire, he works in football officiating’s most vulnerable position. Stationed behind the defensive line and among the linebackers, umpires have to be quick or : well, two Big 12 umpires went down because of injuries after being struck by players last season.
“I’m not afraid of getting hit,” Mascarello said. “I love it. It’s in the middle of the action. My first two years of officiating I was a line judge, but I’ve been an umpire ever since.”
If you follow football, you know the umpire is the official who throws the flag on offensive linemen for holding. And no one knows more about holding than a former offensive guard.
“Hey, anything goes,” he said with a laugh. “But seriously, you could call something on every play. I’ve had good mentoring, and the key is to make calls that stand out and have an impact on the play.”
Mascarello is the second former KU football player to land a Big 12 officiating job. Tom Quick, a wide receiver for the Jayhawks from 1984 to ’86, joined the league staff last year. Quick, also an umpire, was not assigned to work any KU games in 2004, and it’s likely neither he nor Mascarello will work any KU games this fall.
Not that either would give the Jayhawks preferential treatment.
“Right now,” Mascarello said, “for me it’s this team versus that team. It’s just two teams out there.”
