The Secret History of the Company Behind the Super Bowl Coin Toss

The secret history of the company behind the Super Bowl coin toss.

- Caleb Hannan

Just before the start of Super Bowl XLII, as he stood on the 50-yard line of the University of Phoenix Stadium in front of 70,101 impatient fans, head referee Mike Carey was nervous. Not about reaching the highest honor his profession has to offer. Not about blowing a call before a TV audience of 100 million people. What worried Carey on Feb. 3, 2008, was the coin toss.

Although he’d already run through an NFL-mandated dress rehearsal of the flip the day before, other referees had told Carey that, of all possible outcomes in the big game, the prospect of screwing up this short ceremony haunted them the most. (In 2014, celebrity flipper Joe Namath would send the coin up before players even made their call.) “Everything else we’d trained for,” says Carey, now an analyst with CBS Sports. “But the toss is this singular moment. The inauguration of the premier event in sports. There’s a lot of anxiety.”

At least, Carey figured, he’d come away with a collectible. During his 26 years of officiating, he’d made a habit of keeping the coins he flipped. But when the Super Bowl toss he oversaw went off without a hitch (for the record: coin tossed by four-time champ Ronnie Lott, tails, New York Giants ball), Carey didn’t even make it back to the sideline before an NFL representative took the coin from him, hustling it toward its ultimate destination, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where all such pieces are kept.