A Super Bowl certain to be unprecedented in several ways also promises to be historic. For the first time, the NFL’s marquee event will include a female official.
Sarah Thomas, hired as a full-time NFL official in 2015, will be part of the Super Bowl 55 crew, the league has announced. A 47-year-old Mississippi native, Thomas will serve as the down judge for the Feb. 7 contest at Raymond James Stadium.
“Her elite performance and commitment to excellence has earned her the right to officiate the Super Bowl,” Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice-president of football operations, said in a statement.
A married mother of three, Thomas has worked four NFL playoff games. In January 2019, she became the first woman to work an NFL postseason contest, serving as down judge for the Patriots-Chargers game.
She embarked on an officiating career in her home state in 1996, and worked her first varsity high school football game three years later.
After a decade at the prep level, Thomas pondered leaving the profession to spend more time with her family, but was discovered by Gerald Austin, coordinator of officials for Conference USA. In 2007, she became the first woman to work a major college football game, between Memphis and Jacksonville State.
At the end of 2009, she became the first woman to officiate a bowl game, working the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl between Marshall and Ohio.
