No one is denying the replacements arent better, but they are under the most powerful microscope ever. This faux outrage is getting so old that the media is behaving so boorishly. Honestly, I have watched a few NFL games and nothing has really stood out until the media blows it up for the sake of a juicy story. If we are going to use last nights game as a standard for getting rid of officials for egregious screw ups, then why is Ed Hochuli still employed as an NFL ref for basically determining the outcome of Denver San Diego game in 2008? Or Phil Lockett fukking a coin toss in overtime?
[edited - MR] ... you have no idea what you are talking about. you're just trying to make it "hip" to rebel against the masses. the officiating has been atrocious, and that is the reason it has been getting attention.
Nope, not true. They did review the play, and didn't overturn it. You're allowed to review a simultaneous catch ruling in the end zone, but not in the field of play.
http://espn.go.com/espn/playbook/st...ing-control-coaches-players-worse-blown-calls Inhis column this week, Gregg Easterbrook has the most interesting media analysis I've seen.
I'm going to edit out the personal attacks. And remind everyone that we really don't have to discuss NFL officiating here. Seems like a fun topic, but if people can't be reasonable in this thread, it will get shut down quicker than others might. Thanks.
Well if nothing else, the photos/video of that call should demonstrate once and for all the utility of having your AR point the same direction you do. Unless, that is, you're still trying to appease the "Call it both ways ref!" crowd.
Being in the media, I have certain advantages over most of you. First, you have no idea what you are talking about, NC united. And second, if you think this is a made for television/radio story you have another thing coming to you. These replacement refs are in so far over their collective heads that they don't even know which way to point by the end of the night. The players are running roughshod over them much like a u23 mens team would run roughshod over a deer in the headlights newbie 8. They NFL players are in a game where no contract is guaranteed and every tackle could mean the end of their career. And the league wants it to be officiated by folks who don't have the entire package. This is not fake outrage. Did you watch the entire game, NC? I did. The referees lost control sometime in the middle of the third quarter and never got it back. If this had been a HS soccer match between rivals you would have had a 5/6 red card affair with a police presence. This is a professional league with monetary stakes. People lose their jobs based on these decisions, and to say this is fake outrage is laughable. Gambling happens to be legal in Las Vegas, and people win and lose based on these decisions. If you had a couple of grand on that outcome last night at a legitimate sports book, do you think your outrage would be fake? The NFL had a quasi-4th official type down on the sidelines for all games to help these guys make decisions based on the rules. Total break downs over the weekend. Total break down last night. This is very real. It is not made up, and to think otherwise is absolutely stupid. I was with a major football network in the 80"s when the players were on strike and they used replacement players. We couldn't get an advertiser to run in the games because they were using scabs. Big companies like Goodyear, Budweiser, Miller beer all balied out of the games. The car companies too. That's what stopped the strike. The product was diminished, the ratings went down, the advertisers stayed away. Here it is a little different becasue no one tunes in to watch referees. The players are out there performing and people are engaged with the product. But, they wont be if this continues. You have to have a fair result and last night certainly wasnt fair (and I hate Pete Carroll AND the GReen Bay Packers). So many calls that were ill timed, bad, or just wrong. No flow, no flair, no respect. And why should the players respect these guys? This story is certainly not made up and the outrage is real.
Several people and pundits have stated that the refs lost control. I gotta say, I don't see it. There haven't been an inordinate number of (or any , really) mass-confrontations. No real fights. And the level of dirty tackling and/or head-hunting seems about normal to me. What am I missing? I'm hoping the answer is either some sport-specific thing that is simply beyond my expertise or some set of facts that I am missing (I don't watch many games any more). Cuz I think I know what it means to lose control of a game
From what I've seen, it's nothing to do with "losing control" in the sense that there would be more fights or violence between players. It's losing control in the sense that no one has a clue what the standards are for pass interference, illegal contact, defensive holding, etc. It's reached the point where defensive backs and wide receivers are essentially laughing about it outwardly. By way of example, people are focusing on the dual catch aspect of the last play from last night; that was a seemingly poor call, but at least a somewhat debatable one. Much more egregiously bad calls, I felt, were the lack of the offensive pass interference call on that play and a called defensive pass interference during the final drive. Those were two atrociously bad decisions that influenced the outcome of the game and would never get made by the regular referees. American football is not like our sport in the sense that "careless" and "reckless" really can be in the eye of the beholder and vary a little referee to referee--even at the professional level. There are some pretty clear expectations for what constitutes a foul and coaches and players know exactly what is allowed and what isn't... and go as far as to structure practices based off that knowledge. Right now, it's Russian Roulette in the backfields. And as Rufusbac alluded to, that was far-reaching ramifications.
Yeah, I buy that. And I find it "culturally" interesting that those circumstances WOULD likely lead to violence in our sport.
One thing that I am noticing is that the problems are growing with each week, as the players push the boundaries of the officials as much as they can. This is the equivalent of pro Soccer teams who get referees who will never call a penalty for defenders holding on a corner kick, or who are prone to be tricked by dives, except the players have only begun this process. Give this another month, and things will be even worse. I would also say that alot of the problem are the mechanics of the referees. On a lot of the personal foul calls, the referees are really slow to throw the flag (equivalent of waiting too long to show a yellow), which makes almost every call seem to be based on player lobying and/or influenced by the crowd. Same applies for the call last night, where you had two referees making two different signals and never seeming to discuss it. So for me, this is a case study in how crucial the subtler aspects of refereeing are. These guys arn't doing that badly at calling penalties (they are actually doing better than I would have expected), but they have terrible mechanics on every call and simply don't appear confident in any of their decisions.
I don't follow or watch American football (once aptly described by someone as the quintessential American sport in that it consists largely of endless meetings punctuated by short intervals of extreme violence), but as long as we're on the subject: Replacement referees missed a penalty that would have rendered moot a controversy over whether a Seattle Seahawks receiver caught a game-winning touchdown pass a moment later, the National Football League said Tuesday.The Green Bay Packers would have won the game had offensive pass interference been called against Seahawks receiver Golden Tate, but the missed penalty wasn't reviewable. So the officials' controversial on-field ruling that Tate subsequently scored a touchdown by having joint possession of the ball with a Packers defender stands. [CNN] Why would the league make such a statement? Much is lost by it; what is gained?
My brother-in-law in Seattle sent me this on you tube. Don't know how to embed but here's the link. It is a hilarious parody of the NFL situation. http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?featur...esktop_uri=/watch?v=AzPBcCF9yKc&feature=share Edit - I realize this a a serious discussion so if this post belongs elsewhere mods feel free to move/delete.
Credibility. Eventually this strike has to end. If the NFL ignores reality and stands by the replacement referees on even the most indefensible calls (which this was) in the meanwhile, it's going to make the eventual reconciliation all the more difficult. And claiming even a portion of a PR win might become impossible.
Wait wait, we are supposed to sympathize with gamblers? Holy shit since when should an official even think about gamblers? You mentioned players and contracts and safety and all that ball of wax. Last I know, James Harrison was busy head hunting players with the real refs and somehow you are worried about safety. Pittsburgh Steelers teach their players to headhunt. But somehow the replacement refs will make it more dangerous. Whatever. This shit has been going on whether it is real ref or replacement. Yes the outrage is quite faux because the gamblers lost their asses, GB players lost a game, an media loves a story. Color me unimpressed.
Who said anything about sympathizing or the referees concerning themselves with it? You're putting words in other people's mouths and you're doing so in a sensationalist fashion. The fact that gambling occurs--legally and otherwise--on NFL games cannot be ignored. There is a report that the call last night moved $150M-$250M alone. That's on a game in Week 3. Gambling is part of the NFL industry. We're talking a multi-billion dollar industry; when you factor in the playoffs and worldwide amateur betting, it's possibly in the trillion-dollar range annually. That runs the gamut from big dollar bets in Vegas to small prize pools for local fantasy football leagues. The NFL product is interwined with gambling. One of the reasons that the NFL is so popular is because it's so easy to gamble on any game and due to the proliferation in fantasy leagues--some with high-dollar values. So gambling matters when discussing NFL officiating. Period. That doesn't mean that it has to concern referees at all or that you have to "sympathize" with any "gambler." But you're ignoring reality if you want to separate point spreads and related issues from the larger picture about NFL officiating.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that if this were to happen in MLS, it wouldn't be as bad. Take some quality 5's and 6's with top level amateur experience that aren't being tracked for Nationals and they'd be able to keep things together for longer than the NFL replacements. 1) The rule are the same. This is one of the benefits of having a single rule book. You won't have the confusion of NCAA vs NFL rules. 2) While I'm not speaking from experience, just parroting what some have said here in the past, but there are some games at the top level amateur leagues in the big cities that are as tough as MLS matches. 3) The soccer community in America is much smaller so you will have more chances to know the players from before they made it big. I'm not saying it'll be a cake walk but I think it'd be not nearly as ugly as what's happening on the grid-iron.
It is a civil discussion until YOU went all personal calling me a 12 year old. What a hypocrite. Speaking of talk radio, those guys are going way overboard lambasting refs, but that's okay because it fits your narrative.
Not going to continue to argue with you, but please re-reread your posts on this subject. If you think you are being civil and acting your age, then fine, you are. I'm just thinking you must be around 14 then.
But say it is not MLS refs who are on strike, but EPL? Is the difference in levels more significant? Also, is the level of games that 5s and 6s get the same as Div 3 college compared to the NFL? So, everyone: You get a call to do an EPL game due a strike!! Do you go do the game of your lifetime even though you are likely to be way over your head? Soccer-based answer only, let's ignore the political union/anti union stuff.
It's a very different answer for a political reason that has nothing to do with the union stuff. As I understand it, once a referee gets to grade 4 in the English system his assignments come from the FA. So if the select group was all passed over (the closest thing you could come to a lockout I should think), it would be the FA, your normal assignor, who would be assigning you to the match. If you refuse the assignment, you are risking not receiving any further assignments at higher levels. That's quite the opposite of the football situation where the people locked out include those who assign the next level down. Now as to my answer: I'm sure it would be horrible. Going from HS Varsity as my top level to an EPL game strikes me as the kind of experience that could end a career.
Well, they say it's over. So, I wonder, are the guys working tonight's game experiencing any unusual performance anxiety?
No. The game would not be well served by my refereeing several orders of magnitude over my ability. The game should be postponed. Me refereeing the EPL would be like lightening on frozen pitch with unanchored goals. Ignoring the political aspects of the NFL situation is just as political as discussing them out in the open.