The NFL Network canceled an appearance by Mike Pereira, a former official and Fox Sports officiating analyst, who says he planned to promote his veterans foundation, “Battlefields to Ballfields.”
Pereira took to Twitter to note the cancellation and to talk about his confusion over why he was snubbed.
“For those of you I told I was going to be on NFLN this morning, including you Veterans in Rochester, my appearance was canceled because NFLN ‘was hesitant to talk about the rules of the game at this point.’ Really? Thought I was going to talk about our Veteran’s Foundation,” Pereira wrote in a June 13 tweet:
For those of you I told I was going to be on NFLN this morning, including you Veterans in Rochester, my appearance was cancelled because NFLN “was hesitant to talk about the rules of the game at this point.” Really? Thought I was going to talk about our Veteran’s Foundation.
— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) June 13, 2018
As Pro Football Talk noted, it isn’t exactly clear why the NFL was suddenly so reticent to talk about its rules with Pereira. The Fox analyst used to be an NFL referee and later became Vice President of Officiating for the National Football League. Indeed, Pereira has been a long-time commentator on multiple platforms and is hardly a controversial personality.
So far, the NFL Network has made no move to explain the abrupt cancellation.
Pereira launched Battlefields to Ballfields last year to help raise financial backing for training and job placement for veterans.
“I was thinking about the shortage in officiating and how we could get veterans to become officials,” Pereira told USA Today in March of 2017. “Could I start a foundation that could pay for vets to become sports officials?”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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