| Adrian Hill | |
| Birth Place: | Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Education: | University at Buffalo (BS) Johns Hopkins University (MS) |
| Occupation: | NFL official (2010–present) College football official (2004–2009) Aerospace software engineer (1990s–present) |
T. Adrian Hill (born in Washington, D.C.)[1] is an American football official in the National Football League (NFL) since the 2010 NFL season, wearing uniform number 29.[2]
Hill was born in Washington, D.C. and raised mostly in upstate New York. He did not play football in high school because he was undersized. He would play the role of referee when his friends played pickup football.
Hill earned degrees in electrical and software engineering and computer science from the University at Buffalo before moving to the Washington metropolitan area to work as a software engineer for Westinghouse Electric Corporation. To make extra money, he responded to a newspaper ad for football officials and spent the next fourteen years officiating high school football games as a side job. He made $13 per game as a youth football referee.[3]
Hill's first college football officiating experience came in 2004 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. He was an official in Conference USA, where he worked at the referee position. In 2007, Hill worked four games in the now-defunct NFL Europe league[4] as a line judge.
Hill was hired by the NFL in 2010 and made his first appearance during a September 12, 2010, game between the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys at FedExField as a line judge.[5] He was promoted to referee with the start of the 2019 NFL season following the retirements of Pete Morelli and Walt Coleman.[6] He worked as a line judge, side judge, and field judge before being promoted to referee, the seventh African-American to receive this honor.
Hill made unwanted headlines during a January 3, 2021, game when he called a roughing-the-passer penalty against Detroit Lions safety Tracy Walker after he sacked Kirk Cousins of the Minnesota Vikings on a 4th and goal play. The sack, which would have given the Lions the ball, appeared to be routine as the Lions players started to celebrate before realizing the penalty flag was against them. Cousins told Walker "I don't necessarily agree with that call, but I'll take it" as players on both sides of the field looked befuddled about the call. The Vikings would score a touchdown two plays later and go on to win the game 37–35. Both social media and mainstream media outlets covered the call with headlines such as "Tracy Walker's phantom personal foul penalty causes uprising on social media" (Detroit Sports Nation),[7] "NFL fans could not believe the horrendous, game-changing roughing call from Lions-Vikings" (USA Today),[8] "Detroit Lions robbed by one of the worst calls ever in game vs. Minnesota Vikings" (Detroit Free Press),[9] "Ridiculous roughing call on Kirk Cousins sack sets up Vikings' game-winning TD" (Yahoo Sports),[10] "Lions flagged for roughing passer against Vikings on simple sack, befuddles fans" (Fox News)[11] and "Worst Call in NFL History Aids Vikings in 37-35 Win against Lions" (Sports Illustrated).[12] Though it seemed to be a blown call, Hill explained it as a clear-cut penalty in a post-game interview saying "By rule, one of the categories for roughing-the-passer is full body weight, where the tackler lands with his full body weight on the quarterback. That's the category this play fell into."
Source:[13]
After earning his bachelor's degree from Buffalo, Hill earned a Master of Science from Johns Hopkins University.
In the 1990s, Hill worked as a NASA contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center for what became Raytheon Technologies. In 2000, he was hired as an aerospace software engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Space Exploration Sector. He was the flight software lead on MESSENGER and had important roles on the New Horizons mission and the Parker Solar Probe.[14] He has served as the flight software lead for the Precision Tracking Space System, has led the development of fault protection systems for the Radiation Belt Storm Probes and has led flight software development for the Hubble Space Telescope. While working for Raytheon, he was a developer for the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite programs.[15]
In 2006, he was named Engineer of the Year by the Baltimore chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.[16]
He was the lead author of Command and Data Handling Flight Software test framework: A Radiation Belt Storm Probes practice, a paper presented at the 2013 IEEE Aerospace Conference.[17]
, Hill resided in Bowie, Maryland with his wife, VaLerie. He is the brother of Seattle radio host, Steve "The Thrill" Hill of the KISW 99.9 radio show The Mens Room.