The NFL and Replacement Refs

I caught the end of the Seattle - Green Bay game tonight and after listening to all of the post game discussions I felt compelled to write something about the situation with the officials. 

First off - yes, off course the refs blew the game tonight and cost Green Bay the win.  Even the most diehard Seahawks fan would have a hard time claiming they deserved to win with a straight face.  It wasn't just the last call either.  The replacement officials blew a series of calls down the stretch, all in Seattle's favor.  They were awful tonight, but it shouldn't be a huge surprise that guys who officiate D-III college football are struggling a little with the rules and speed of the NFL.  It's not the replacement ref's fault - they're doing the best they can.

What I want to talk about is WHY we have replacement refs at all.  The paraphrased comment from almost every media member after the game was "If this doesn't get the NFL to bring back the regular refs I don't know what will".  What this tells you is that the media (even Steve Young with his law degree from BYU), much like 99% of the fans, either have no idea what they're talking about or are being intellectually dishonest when it comes to this issue.  Allow me to educate:

·         The first thing that confuses people is the term "lock-out".  People hear that the refs are "locked-out" by the league which paints the picture that the NFL isn't letting them come to work.  Lock-out is simply legal semantics.  The refs are on strike, but because the NFL is based in New York - a "forced unionization" state - they cannot legally allow the regular refs, who are unionized, to return to work without a collective bargaining agreement signed.  If the NFL were based in a right-to-work state such as South Carolina for example, they wouldn’t have to be "locked-out" and would simply be on strike because there would be no state legal issue with allowing individual refs to "cross the picket line" so to speak and return to work. 

·         So what is the NFL Referee Union striking about?  Well, first of all they want more money.  No surprise there - collective bargaining units always want more money.  Actually, this isn't really a sticking point as the NFL has agreed to a substantial raise for officials.  What is a sticking point, however, is the NFL refusing to grant pensions for "part-time" officials.  They still want to continue the pensions for all full-time officials but not for the part-timers (by the way, the NFL wants all the officials to be full time).  They also want to add at least one more crew, and possibly up to 21 new officials.  The union is dead set against this.  Now why would a union EVER be opposed to ADDING members?  Simple - if there are more officials, it allows the NFL to "bench" some crews from week to week and to have replacement refs trained to replace older officials who might retire.  Another issue that has the union digging their heels in is that the NFL wants to evaluate officials performance.  Currently, the officials self-evaluate.  In other words, the refs don't want their boss to be able to evaluate them based on performance and decide who works from week to week based on those performance evaluations.  

Don't blame the NFL for not having the regular refs - blame the regular refs. 

As a final thought:  I found it ironic that Green Bay - whose state basically "occupied" the capitol building last year to defend their status as a forced unionization state was beaten tonight by a labor strike (although to be fair, Washington is also a forced unionization state so I guess the Washington labor unions beat the Wisconsin labor unions 14-12).:-)