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.Eli wrote: It doesn't imply that at all.
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.
Well this sucks.