"My dad officiated for many years, so I suppose it runs in the blood," says Parry, whose father recently retired as national coordinator of college football officials.
Parry started officiating local sports in high school in Michigan City, Ind., and kept at it doing intramural sports while majoring in aviation technology at Purdue. He was a corporate pilot for 18 years and kept working his way up the football ladder by officiating Conference USA, Big Ten and Arena Football League games.
Over time, forces converged to prompt a career change from piloting to planning. He and his wife plowed money into their 401(k)s
and IRAs with no guidance, and as Parry educated himself on risk management, asset allocation and other financial topics, he took a shine to researching investments. His brother-in-law was a financial advisor, and Parry says he peppered him with so many questions he told Parry that maybe he should become an advisor.
The idea was appealing. His interest in money was growing, as was his football career, his young family, and the number of overnight flights required by his pilot job. The idea of being self-employed sounded good. He got his securities licenses in 2005, hung up his pilot wings and hung out a shingle as a financial advisor. "I wish I had done it sooner," says Parry, noting that it works well with his football schedule and family life.
"As a planner, I'm a long-term, asset allocation, risk management type of guy who's quarterbacking households to make sure they have the assets to retire," he says with no pun intended. Parry has about 350 clients with roughly $20 million in assets. "I don't advertise; it's all word-of-mouth," he says.
Parry's office has a minimum of football memorabilia, and he downplays his weekend job. "My focus when in the office during normal working hours is on finance and my clients," he says.
Regarding his NFL job, the cycle begins in March with a battery of physical tests he and his colleagues take to clear them for the upcoming season. Starting in mid-May, they take a series of written and video exams dealing with play scenarios and penalty calling. In July, there's a four-day clinic in Dallas to go over rules changes and such. In late July and early August, referees split up and are sent to various team training camps for several days to present new rule changes and interpretations to players and coaches. Then comes three or four preseason games in August, followed by the four-month regular season.
Parry's nine-man crew works mainly east of the Mississippi River, but they call a few West Coast games each season. Typically, he'll fly into a city by noon on Saturday, and then meet his crew that afternoon for a pregame meeting, a weekly test given by the league, and a video session with tapes of the prior weekend games involving the two teams they'll officiate the next day. Dinner is usually at the Marriott, the official hotel of NFL officiating crews.
For a 1 p.m. game, the crew gets to the stadium by 9:30 a.m. Once there, Parry is in nonstop meetings with the television production crew and broadcasters (as crew chief, he controls the game's 25 TV commercial breaks), as well as with local security officials, the chain crew, the ball boys, the teams' PR people, and both coaches. He also checks to make sure the microphone and clocks work properly.