Ron Blum
Ron Blum is a former American football official in the National Football League (NFL), having served in that role from the 1985 NFL season through the 2007 NFL season. He joined the league as a line judge, officiating Super Bowl XXIV in 1990 and Super Bowl XXVI in 1992 and later became a referee for the start of the 1993 NFL season, replacing retired legend Pat Haggerty. Blum moved back to line judge beginning with the 2004 NFL season, and he has worked the past three seasons on the crew of referee Tony Corrente.
Blum wore the uniform number 83 from the 1985 to 1992 seasons and the number 7 from 1993 through 2007. He was the first non-referee to wear the uniform number 7; the number belonged to long-time referees Tommy Bell and Fred Silva before Blum assumed it upon his promotion to crew chief. Side judge Keith Washington took the number upon Blum's retirement.
In the offseason, Blum is a golf professional. For a number of years in the 1960s and 1970s, he was the head golf pro at the Sonoma National Golf Course in Sonoma County, California.
Blum was the referee for the San Diego Chargers' 27–17 victory over the New York Giants at Giants Stadium on December 23, 1995. The contest was notable because both teams, the game officials and other field-level personnel spent the entire second half dodging snowballs hurled by unruly fans. A few such projectiles hit Blum's legs. When he picked up a telephone on the Chargers' sidelines to make a call to request that a verbal warning to the crowd be made over the public address system, a snowball narrowly missed hitting him. Instead it struck Chargers equipment manager Sid Brooks, who was knocked unconscious and had to be removed from the sidelines on a stretcher.[1]
Ron Blum retired after the 2007 season.