Big deal or not?

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/f ... index.html

I think it's a crappy thing to do to the refs but I don't think the game will suffer much from it. Which is probably why this is happening. In America when someone else is willing to do your job for less money and your company doesn't feel like they'll lose much value in switching, you'll get fired.

American companies have changed a lot in the last thirty years

There are a few really good refs, but most of them are not very good and miss some very obvious things. I am thinking replacement refs won't be as bad as the Ref's union thinks.

The qualifications for being a ref basically amounts to knowing the rules, understanding your role on the ref team, and having eyes. Certainly having experience actually watching the games makes a difference, but other than experience I can't see a huge difference from one ref to another. Even then, the current refs had to start somewhere.

Yeah but you have to admit that some crews are WAY better than others. Ed Hocchuli and Walt Anderson have the best two crews, IMO. I also like Mike Carey (I think that is his name). As for the others, I could take them or leave them.

I actually think this a big deal and I don't understand why Goodell and the NFL are taking such a hard stance with the officials.

People complain about the quality of NFL officiating but those offials are still at the top of their profession. They're the best at what they do and I think we're kidding ourselves if we don't think there will be a significant drop in the quality of officiating if the NFL goes with replacements.

I'm not sure people are seriously considering the impact such a drop could have on games. The NFL's company line is, naturally, that everything will be fine but I doubt it. Some more info on this issue:

[url=http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/blog/eye-on-football/19712899/early-returns-on-replacement-officials-not-good
]Early returns on replacement officials not good[/url]

Memo: NFL recruiting lower-division college ranks, semi-pro leagues for replacement refs

Complaints continue about replacement officials, Goodell sounds unconcerned

Minnesota Vikings, NFL turning to replacement officials, for better or worse

From the last link:



One more:
Replacement officials poised to work HOF game

Hochuli is awful and his explanations for calls are novels. Bill Leavy's crew should be fired.

Just a couple of the more visible examples. I have little doubt that if you really wanted to, you could replace 90% of the 'real' officials with someone better. Calling them the best in the world is a joke. It's a part time job that has always paid poorly and attracts job candidates accordingly.

But what we're going to see are endless writeups and commentaries about how the poor officiating is affecting game outcomes. Which we could see every single weekend in the NFL, but we don't because nobody in the NFL front office appears to give a ####, and it quickly gets old.

I disagree about Hochuli, his crew generally does a good job, IMO. I like Walt Anderson and Mike Carey the best. The rest of them are not high in my books.

If you consider it a joke to describe the NFL's officials as the best football officials in the world then please, enlighten us and tell us just where those officials are working? The NCAA? High School? Semi-pro football? Canada?



Former officials say that during the season, the NFL officials work 40+ hours a week. They definitely don't just show up on Sunday, officiate a game and then head off to their "day jobs" for the rest of the week.

I can see I'm wasting my virtual breath in this thread.

No? How do you think they do their day jobs then?

I think many of them probably have arrangements that enable them to put a little time into their other jobs during football season while spending a significant portion of their week reviewing film, conferencing with members of their crew (and the league office), traveling to games, etc. They make their own travel arrangements and have to arrive at least 24 hours before kickoff. This article about Walt Anderson provides some insight into how he spends his work week during the season:

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archi ... l-spe.html

This article provides more detail about an NFL official's work week:

http://insidefootball.com/blog/archives/724

Again, even though they are part time employees, NFL officials do more than just show up and call a game every week.

I'm still wondering: where all the officials superior to the NFL refs working? If it's a joke to refer to the NFL crews as the best, that obviously implies the best are officiating football somewhere else, (and doing it so well that they are clearly superior).

It doesn't imply that at all. It means that you could find better officials if the job were full time and paid better. Do you realize what percentage of the U.S. population is able to perform their day job on part-time basis for six or seven months per year? It's infinitely small. Which means that the potential number of job candidates is extremely small.

The reason that it's not a full time job with better pay is exactly the same reason that the officials are out on strike right now. The NFL is too cheap to pay what the position should be paid. They don't care to find the best possible officials, either now during the strike or when the regular bunch is on the field.

First year officials made an average of $78,000 in 2011. Ten year vets averaged $139,000 last year. I have my doubts that they're making more working in their "full time day jobs".

A lot of the disagreement comes from the NFL wanting to do away with pensions and what not.

The official stance of the refs was that they never threatened to strike in the first place, actually;
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/80130 ... er-planned

Of course it does. I didn't say they were the best officials possible. I said they're the best. If it's a joke to make that claim, then the implication is that better football officials exist... now. What you're talking about are hypothetical officials. Sure, if the pool of candidates was larger and the NFL was able to find enough to occupy full-time officials for 12 months, they could probably raise the overall quality of the officiating but right now, the only officials out there are part-time and if I'm not mistaken, that's true at all levels of the sport.

In other words, unless you can point to another league or level of football with better officiating, the NFL officials are the best at what they do. The possibility that they could be better or could be replaced by someone better if the league employed full-time officials and expanded their training program is a separate issue.

Anyway, the larger point here is that the replacements the NFL has chosen are significantly less experienced than the usual crew of NFL officials and there's likely to be a drop in the quality of the officiating that could impact games. Since people are clearly already aggravated and dissatisfied with NFL officiating, I think going with less accomplished, experienced crews is probably a big step in the wrong direction, especially when the league could solve the problem quite easily.

Considering they couldn't even get the coin toss right, I'm a little worried.

I honestly didn't think the regular refs were very good to be honest.. so I'm not too worried about it

I will say that if we find out that the normal refs are the "best" at what they do, then we have some biiiiig problems...

OMFG... that Bills game with the touchback. That just helped the real refs out tons. If that was a regular season game, I woul dbe livid. What a disgusting call.
The real refs are better, although I still think they need MAJOR improvements in their games.

More problems.

Robbie Gould: Replacement refs 'clueless'



http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcnorth/post/_ ... s-clueless

This could end up being a nightmare if the real refs don't get on the field soon. The guys they have now must be REALLY bad if it is making the real refs look good...

Even though we all get aggravated with them at times, most of the regular NFL officials really are good. Like anybody, they have bad days but they know the rules and more often than not, they do a good job. We get to watch games at home with the benefit of slow motion instant replays but they have to make the calls in real time, at field level, and there are 7 of them watching 22 players at a time. It's inevitable that they will miss a few calls or get a few wrong but when you consider how many plays are in each game and how many they get right vs. how many they get wrong, most of the time they do a good job.

The NFL needs to get this situation resolved or as you said, it could be a nightmare. During the preseason, it's much easier for fans, coaches and players to cut the replacements a little slack but when the inexperience of the replacement officials starts impacting regular season games, things could get ugly in a hurry.

I agree but the sense I get is the NFL will not cave until officials agree to the defined contribution 401K rather than the defined benefit pension they have now. And officials are unlikely to cave because they have other jobs. Stalemate. Everybody loses.

It's looking that way...

Holy lord - that Buffalo touchback call was a thing of WTF?!?!?!?!

RT by Adam Schefter

Well this sucks.

Yes, it does! I won't be surprised if it costs a team a win. I just hope the Vikings won't be that team.