Well pre-season starts in a few days and the NFL and officials union are still not close to a deal. TBH I kinda want to see what happens when they put high school/low level college/failed D-1 officials on an NFL field. Any thoughts on it? Anyone care?
Major League Baseball went through this in the '90's. The union made a huge hash of it. A bunch of guys lost their jobs and never umpired in MLB again, a few got their jobs back after five or seven years, I think, and some guys got the chance to make it to the show that probably never would have otherwise.
True. However the replacements in baseball we're Triple A umps already working their way up to the top. From what I've heard some of these NFL replacements are guys who've never done above high school level or got let go by college conferences for performance.
I would like to see how this will unfold because if you know the rules and know how to manage a football game the transition won't be as bumpy. Texas HS football is basically semi-pro ball (it is a joke so laugh) and those guys go through huge crowds, many controversial calls, politics, you name it. Same goes for many football mad states in the US. However, this is a good opportunity for new blood because quite frankly the officiating in the NFL is pretty bad. These are the same old guys in the same old group during the same old stuff. I think new blood is instrumental in making the game better.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/football/news/2001/08/28/nfl_officials_ap/ They used college officials. I remember someone saying something about it was hard because the refs didn't have proper time to prepare for the game since they had all called a college game the day before. Of course, that might've been the ref union mouthpiece talking.
Can't you say that about any league in regards to officiating? Look at the NBA, Joey Crawford has been refereeing in the NBA before the three point line was invented. Some guys in the MLB have been there since the 70s/80s. Look at MLS. Likes of Kevin Stott, Craig Lowry, Steve Taylor have been refereeing in the league since the league was founded. Look at your local/regional level. There are guys in my high school chapter who have done the same games for 30 years. I went to regionals and there was a guy I met who was there for the 7th straight year!! This was my 2nd year and I don't know if I can make it a 3rd. That's the nature of the beast that is officiating sports. Experience is everything. For the NFL pretty soon the whole game will be refereed from the both, so it doesn't really matter who officiates their games.
But how do get experience if you don't give them the shot? Granted there are officials for 30 years that still do the job quite well, but then there are those like Joey Crawford, Joe West, Ed Hochuli who have no business being on the field to officiate a high level game. There needs to be some limits to this.
I think one of the fundamental differences here is that, in soccer, there is a fairly clear path to doing MLS games. Yes, some people who want to get there and don't complain about how unfair it is that they didn't get there, but it really does boil down to performance on the field. Baseball has pretty much the same thing with the umpire schools leading to single A, etc. Football does not. There are no minor leagues in football and college assignors can pretty much pick anyone or not use someone anymore with very little development path. You usually don't see guys moving from D3 to D2 to D1 in football. A lot of D1 college guys were doing high school immediately before becoming a D1 college official. So, if you're the NFL, how do you pick a replacement, much less a replacement for everybody?
But why does the experience matter? They have instant replay, right? I mean just make sure the guy watching the replays knows his stuff and you're good to go The rest of the guys on the field just need to run around and look good.
"run around?" Have you seen some of those guys? For a line judge, "running around" means moving maybe five yards. No wonder their officials hang around so long. There's a high school football referee (the guy with the white hat) around here who is 91 years old! Doesn't look a day over 85!
I saw a report in April that someone in their 90's here in Texas was registered to referee High School soccer.
To be fair: Just cause you're registered doesn't mean you're officiating At least around here, we use registered High School officials on Middle School matches, so that 70 year old may be doing 5th-6th grade games, where he doesn't need to move much We also use our veterans as "Observers", what amounts to a sort of assessor. They must be registered, but instead of officating the game, they watch other officials and provide feedback.
And around my area, just because you are registered doesn't mean you have ever refereed or know anything about refereeing. Last HS season my assignor was trying to fill a hole on the crew of a game to which I was assigned. He called a new guy on The List who 1. had no uniform and 2. asked if we cancelled games for weather because he wouldn't referee in the rain. I've never been so happy to work a dual instead of our normal three man crews.
We have a guy who is 76 who did a boys varsity dual last year and is doing women's amateur games occasionally. And not bad fitness either.
Well, this weekend has proved one thing. Professional officials are there because they are the best at what they do. Can't take D-III, HS, and Lingerie League refs and stick them in the NFL. Just like you can't take a 6 or 5 and throw them into MLS. Even if they know the rules in an out, which with the NFL replacements is debatable, they just don't have the man management and respect of the players.
Totally over reactionary bullshit being spewed by the media. It is hip to bash the replacement refs. What is absolutely disgusting is how short sighted people are. Players and coaches behaviors have been absolutely atrocious and they are contributing to this mess because the media is perpetuating the story. Last nights play was a judgment call, nothing more. Faux outrage is so lame and you are just gobbling it up. We've seen soccer refs totally screw up a game and affect outcomes. What is funny is a lot are still employed, but somehow the replacements are free game to bash. Whatever.
Totally agree that the media is playing this for all its worth--and what it is worth is ratings, eyeballs and talk show listeners. The post-game announcing after the game last night, reminded me of the start of Desert Storm without Wolf Blitzer and tracers in the sky. I was a little disappointed with the former referee who is in the booth now on MNF games. His motivations are obvious, (support the Union and get the 'real' refs back, asap) but still his eagerness to throw the replacements under the bus was more than a little disturbing. He could have made his same points by stressing that those guys are familiar with a different rule book, are not used to this speed of play, and are not used to working with their fellows. It would not have killed his point to stress angle of view, proximity to action, and the whole one chance in real-time thing. Instead he sounds like every former player color announcer declaring "This was a wrong call. That flag should not have been thrown." A real opportunity to develop fan sympathy for the difficulty of the job was missed.
I did enjoy the analogy from a commentator of having a substitute teacher in school where you try to get away with as much as possible before being shut down. So yes, I partially blame the players. There have been a few comments about how the officials can't see the game at the speed it's being played at. But at the same time they talk about how it takes 18 games for the game to "slow down (mentally)" for rookies. I think the complaints shouldn't be to the officials, but to the league. Last year they were fighting billions of dollars with the players. Now, assuming they are fighting over 100k per official (just a guess) at 7 officials per game and 16 teams of officials, that would come out to $11Mil. So, an industry valued at $9Bil/year, is holding out for .1%.
I'm strongly of the opinion that replacement officials are inferior to NFLRA officials, but that they're not nearly as bad as players and coaches think they are. I think they're being more strongly criticized in general than the NFLRA officials ever have been or would be simply because they're not as experienced. What's not being criticized enough is the lack of scope of video replay. Yeah, that last call was really bad, but video clearly showed it should've been ruled an interception. Yet, because of the lack of scope of video replay, the replay officials were not allowed to overturn the decision on the basis of the change of possession. To me, that's more ridiculous than the officials missing the call in the first place. The NFL has already bought into video replay, thereby eschewing any sort of technology-is-bad sentiment that soccer fans may harbor, so why not go all in on the technology?
Part of the Replacements problems is that lack of knowledge of NFL rules, something which wouldn't apply to a soccer official; however, what defines great officials vs merely average is there ability to manage players and coaches despite making mistakes (100% correct refereeing is impossible). What these replacement referees are demonstrating is just how important this skill is, especially at the professional level where everyone is going to try to take advantage of you.
Yeah, that's the thought experiment I keep doing: What would happen if we took a bunch of D3 College Soccer referees and had them do the next UEFA Champion's league tournament??? Both the NFL replacements and my imaginary replacements immediately fail on being able to deal with the speed of play. Seems like a wash to me. I'll lump the "judgement" calls in here too. Things like the threshhold for holding, pass interference compared to the whole trifling-careless-reckless-excessive continuum on fouls. Whatever standards of consistency used to be there are completely gone. But I think the soccer guys score much better than the NFL Replacements on "rules". The NFL rulebook is HUGE and those little differences come up with incredible frequency. On the flip side, man management in the NFL seems to be about where it always is (Coaches are allowed to scream endlessly and for anything, players mostly just go on to the next play). Unfortunately, I think my imaginary soccer refs would have been lynched and set on fire by now.
I'm reminded of an article in Referee magazine a few years ago that quoted a Major League Baseball umpire, talking about how he came into the the bigs. He said something to the effect that 'here I'm thinking, I've made it to the show, I must be one of the best umpires out there, but none of the players paid any attention to what he was saying. ??? It took several years in MLB before they would recognize that maybe he was right, a time that he identified as coinciding with the time when some of the players became coaches. When a few of those coaches became managers, now he was good ole' Joe, who knows his stuff. The problem for these guys is that all of them are new at the same time. The media ignores the fact that everybody who has ever refereed a NFL game has had a first season in the league. And Seattle thinks it was a righteous call!