Mr. Easley, left, signals Monday after the disputed play giving the Seattle Seahawks a game-winning score. Press

SANTA MARIA, Calif.—Before Monday night, Lance Easley was a mostly anonymous full-time banker for Bank of America Corp. and part-time high-school football referee blowing whistles in a Christian league in California.

Before becoming the face of the disputed call in the Green Bay-Seattle football game Monday night, referee Lance Easley was a full-time banker for Bank of America. David Benoit reports on Markets Hub. Photo: AP.

By Tuesday morning, he was the toast of Seattle, the scourge of Green Bay, Wis., the owner of his own Wikipedia entry and now maybe the man most influential in the campaign to bring back regular referees to the National Football League.

Most who follow professional football would know Mr. Easley as the replacement referee who wore No. 26. He was the man holding his arms straight upward signaling a touchdown by the Seattle Seahawks even as a defensive player appeared to intercept the ball in the end zone, which would have meant no scoring play.

Mr. Easley's call gave the game to the Seahawks, despite widespread doubt, which sent the NFL scrambling to explain how a disputed call by a replacement referee could seemingly cost a team in their $10 billion league an apparent victory.

The increased pressure and fan outrage across the U.S. also injected urgency into negotiations between the league and its regular officials' union, which reached a deal late Wednesday.

When the NFL began hiring replacements such as Mr. Easley in the spring, it had to hire them from the lower levels of football, such as Division III college leagues, or referees recently retired from higher levels. Top college officials aren't moonlighting, as they did in 2001, mostly out of fear of losing their current jobs.

After Monday, one of Mr. Easley's bank clients, Randal Moos, who owns a company that makes high-tech water filters, said he sent an encouraging text message to Mr. Easley, who friends described as a devoted Christian.

"Pray for me," Mr. Easley responded at one point, Mr. Moos said.

A person inside Mr. Easley's pink stucco home on the outskirts of Santa Maria declined to open the front door for a reporter and wouldn't answer questions. A neighbor said the Easley home had been staked out by television trucks.

Mr. Easley, 52 years old, is like other referees in the NFL, both regular refs and their much-maligned replacements: They toil in regular day jobs when they aren't flying around the country to place themselves in the direct paths of large men bearing full pads and often a grudge.

He is a vice president of small-business banking for Bank of America, the nation's second-largest bank by assets, the bank confirmed Wednesday. Mr. Easley works with companies that earn less than $5 million of annual revenue, a tiny amount for the nation's big banks.

A typical small-business banker would work with clients on business plans and getting them loans or lines of credit to help them pay the rent, make payroll or buy new equipment. Mr. Easley works out of a branch adjacent to the Town Center Mall of Santa Maria. He joined the bank last June, after leaving rival Wells Fargo & Co. where he had been in a similar role just north of Santa Maria in the town of San Luis Obispo.

Mr. Moos, the president and chief executive of Atmospheric Water Systems Inc., said he has known the banker for more than two years, meeting him first at a Wells Fargo bank branch. Mr. Moos said Mr. Easley was an engaged and helpful banker who talked up his water-filtration business to friends.

"He really loved our business, loved what we were doing," Mr. Moos said. "He just wanted to see us succeed to the point where he was telling his friends about us, and he actually got us several selling opportunities."

Working a full-time job that doesn't involve whistles and flags is the norm for the NFL's crews.

In Meridian, Idaho, replacement referee Jim Core's eighth-grade world geography class gets together every week to watch his games, according to one parent who didn't want to be identified.

Replacement alternate official Craig Ochoa, who has received attention as a former referee for the Lingerie Football League, a women's league in which players wear lingerie, is a Highway Commissioner for Hanover Township in Illinois.

Among the ranks of the regular officiating crews, Ed Hochuli, known to NFL fans for his muscular arms, is a trial attorney in Phoenix with a focus on liability defense, retail and transportation in Arizona.

Mike Carey, the first black referee to head a Super Bowl crew, is a San Diego-based inventor and entrepreneur who co-founded his own business, Seirus. It specializes in snow skiing innovations such ad Cat Tracks, slip-ons that improve traction on snow boots.

These outside jobs are a factor in the negotiations between the league and the referee's union. According to one NFL owner speaking before the deal was reached, the referees' reluctance to become full-time NFL employees was one of the reasons owners have been so unwilling to compromise.

The major sticking points in Wednesday's negotiations were over the referees' pension plan—the league wants to move to a 401(k)—and over the league's ability to "bench" referees for poor performance.

Outside of his banking life, Mr. Easley immerses himself in being a referee. He is president of Los Padres Basketball Officials Association, a collective of referees for high-school games. He also refereed and helped organize an all-star football game for the Central Coast division of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

Santa Maria City Manager Rick Haydon calls Mr. Easley, whom he has known for three or four years, "a man of integrity" with "sound reasoning."

Luke Llamas, the area director for the Central Coast FCA, said he has known Mr. Easley for about two years and said he seemed excited about working in the NFL. Mr. Llamas recalled him helping the league recognize other referees who had long worked in the area, as well as identify players for awards."He really believes in the importance of officials and good officiating," Mr. Llamas said.

Pat Cusack, assistant varsity football coach at St. Joseph High School in Santa Maria, said Mr. Easley has a good reputation locally. Mr. Cusack said a couple of Mr. Easley's calls have raised local eyebrows, though nothing like the furor he set off Monday.

Mr. Easley issued two delay-of-game calls while officiating a "powder-puff" game last spring that pitted teams of high-school girls against each other in flag football, Mr. Cusack said. The calls struck some attendees as unduly harsh for such an informal setting.

Mr. Cusack, who considers Mr. Easley a friend, said that the all-girls game was on his mind Monday night as he watched the Green Bay-Seattle game.

As the momentous nature of Mr. Easley's now-infamous call came into focus, he said, "I'm just thinking to myself, 'No way: It's going to come down to a call from our high-school ref.' "

Write to David Benoit at and Kevin Clark at