Gary Wait has one of Arrowhead’s most important jobs—one most fans never notice

For more than a decade, Gary Wait has had one of the best seats in Arrowhead Stadium. He just doesn’t get to watch much football from it.

Perched in the press box some nine stories above the field, Wait spends Chiefs games watching officials, tracking the ball and guarding against clock malfunctions as the game clock operator. The stakes are high. One lapse in concentration might affect the outcome of the entire game.

A retired Kansas City firefighter, this season will be Wait’s 12th manning the game clock. “When you work for the NFL, it’s all about ‘Protecting the Shield,’ as they call it,” Wait says. “They are all about the quality of the product, the integrity of the game and their reputation. They stress it. There’s a lot of eye balls on you, and you have to toe the line.”

Wait serves as the captain for the Game Day Assistants team, which includes three people in the pressbox some nine stories above the playing field—one running the playclock, one monitoring coach-to-quarterback communications and one, Wait, on the game clock. As captain, Wait also coordinates with the instant replay crew, who sits one floor below him during games, as well as the chain crew on the field.

“We’re working in unison, with everybody looking out for each other,” Wait says. “Running the clock, though, I am constantly keeping an eye out for malfunctions, and I have to zero in on the officials and the ball, so I’m not really watching the game like everybody else does.” 

Of course, it helps that Wait is extremely familiar with the game. After graduating from Raytown High School, he played wide receiver for Iowa State University, where he earned bachelor degrees in education and sports medicine and a masters in physiology. Wait started his professional life off as a math and PE teacher at Raytown High before becoming a Kansas City firefighter. He worked for the Kansas City Fire Department from 1987 until 2019, eventually becoming captain and safety officer at historic Station 23 on the corner of Independence Avenue and Van Brunt Boulevard.

But despite a career that took him off the field, Wait has always stayed in the game. For 44 years now, Wait has been officiating high school football games for the Missouri State High School Athletics Association. He also spent 22 years officiating college games with the hopes of becoming an NFL referee but decided to stop when he realized officiating NFL games wasn’t in the playbook.

“I gave up the college games when I turned 47,” says Wait, who is now 66. “I could see the NFL wasn’t going to happen. Nowadays they take guys close to 50, but back then that was taboo. They wanted guys in their 30s.”

But apparently the NFL had been eyeing Wait. They reached out to him about becoming a game day assistant for the Chiefs. Wait worked as an alternate for six years and in 2015 became Arrowhead’s full-time clock keeper, replacing Larry Smith, a Kansas City school principal who now works as an on-field NFL official. Another Kansas City educator, Grant Christianson, joined Wait in the booth that same year as the playclock operator.

“I’m so lucky to have Grant on the playclock because he’s so analytical and smart,” Wait says.

On game day, Wait arrives about four hours before anyone else. After making his way through a half dozen facial recognition security checks, he busies himself checking equipment, ensuring his crew arrives and participating in various pre-game meetings. He’ll meet with the on-field officials both before and after every game and then write a game report when he gets home.

Working the game clock means Wait watches the ball and the officials constantly. For example, on an ordinary running play, the clock keeps moving after the play ends. On an incomplete pass, certain out-of-bounds plays, a score, a timeout, change of possession and numerous other situations, it stops. An official can signal for the clock to stop, but the NFL rulebook also specifically authorizes the operator to stop it based on his own “positive knowledge” that a clock-stopping event occurred. Then, Wait must be ready to start the clock again at the exact right moment. It could be when the ball is snapped or when the referee signals the ball is ready for play. It’s imperative that the clock operator and others in the Game Day Assistants team have an intimate knowledge of NFL timing rules rather than simply reacting to whistles. 

“If you don’t stay laser-focused, you’ll miss something,” Wait says. “And if you fail an assignment, you pay the price—which might mean being pulled from your assignment and at the very least usually means missing out on being awarded playoff and international games.”

Fortunately for Wait and his crew, the NFL likes what they see at Arrowhead. Wait’s crew has been awarded playoff games each of the last four years (two years ago in Minnesota and last year in Phoenix) and international games in London in 2015 and 2023 and Spain in 2025. Wait recently learned that he will be working the Cowboys-Ravens game in week three this year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Of all of the stadiums at which he’s worked, Wait says Arrowhead is his favorite. “I love Arrowhead,” he says.

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