A Closer Look At The NFL Referee's Lockout

An official or referee for any one of the major sports may be one of the most difficult positions in the working world. The amount of chaos and detail they need to analyze in a split second often calls for second guessing, or anger from the given stadium or park that they are working in. Ask Jim Joyce about how difficult it is to make even the simplest out call in a game when the pressure on the field is so high you can cut it with a proverbial knife. For those of you who do not know Jim Joyce blew a very easy out call at first base for the final out of what would have been a perfect game. So how do these men and women not get the same respect as the players when it comes to lock out negotiations?

Officiate: To perform the duties and functions of an office or a position of authority. Certainly reads like a full time job when looked up on Webster’s Dictionary.com, so why is it that these officials in the NFL are treated as a part time employee? Would you consider Tom Brady, Mark Sanchez and Michael Vick part time employees? They participate in their field the same amount of time as officials yet the players are held to higher standard and regard than the officials. Now before we jump off the deep end and start making those comparisons with pay and benefits lets just keep in mind they perform in the same amount of games.

Like in every lock out both sides, the officials and the league, want to feel like their coming out the “winners” what they fight for in the long term they seem to forget in the short term, the impact this is having on the football being played right now in August. I was in attendance Monday night for the Patriots-Eagles game and witnessed 10 first half penalties against just the Eagles alone, and this was a team playing their entire first-string talent. This is mostly alarming because the Eagles as a team averaged just over six penalties a game last year and had three roughing the passer penalties alone on Monday. That is not the only situation that has raised eyebrows with these “replacement refs” several of them have been quick to call the wrong penalty or mark off the wrong amount of yardage for the penalty this pre season.

So lets get down to it, what do the officials want and what would the league like to see? Officials are on record as saying that they would like to collect a full pension at the end of their career and would like to be treated as a full time employee of the National Football League. The league on the other hand would like to add more full time referees to dilute the commitment of their current referees and minimize them to remaining part time employees.

So what exactly is the difference and how much would it cost to close the gap between the two and get Ed Hocculi and his fellow professionals back on the field for Week One? It has been speculated by Sports Illustrated writer Peter King that it could cost as little as $60,000 more per team to make sure that these referees are taken care of and the demands can at least be met to some degree. This would allow the current referees to maintain full time status and give them a bump in their current pension plans. Other things that could bring the two closer to an agreement is to make the current professionals full time, while also adding some additional part time referees. This would allow the current refs to collect a full pension, feel like they have one while also keeping their workload down, which is what the league ultimately wants given the fact that referees are paid on a union mandated per game pay schedule (which makes playoff games and super bowls a true compliment to their individual craft).

At the end of the day there is no reason these two sides cant come to an agreement that will allow both sides to come away winners, if the owners are really not willing to concede that money to make sure the level of play is up to par then they can not be considered someone who has the interest of the league at heart. Things like having just one professional referee on the field and making calls from a TV booth high above the stadium is not something that will make their fan base happy. These replacement referees are drawing attention to themselves in each and every game, going above and beyond the level of human error that is to be expected in today’s game. While we have become accustom to some level of human error in the sports world, lets make sure it’s the human error on the field were concerned about come week one, and not the human error in the Owners Box.