Tasser: Replacement refs not doing their job

Roger Goodell, stop being uncompromising and give in already. Pay the real NFL referees the…Roger Goodell, stop being uncompromising and give in already. Pay the real NFL referees the paltry thousands more they’re asking from your billion-dollar league so that everyone will shut up already. When the top football stories on Tuesday mornings deal with what the officials did on Sunday and Monday instead of what the players did, it’s time to cave. Give the zebras what they want.

According to a June 5 article on Espn.com, the NFL Referees Association never planned a strike but balked when the NFL offered them a lower pay raise than it did in the last collective bargaining agreement in 2006. To make matters worse, they were incensed to hear that the NFL planned to discontinue the referees’ pension plan, which had been in place since 1974.

Mike Arnold, counsel for the NFLRA, was quoted in the article as saying the NFL declined a proposition to “grandfather” away the pension plan, which essentially limited it to current referees before discontinuing it.

“The league’s proposal is a massive takeaway in the overall economic package at play in the negotiations,” Arnold said in the article. “Now, despite record revenues, the NFL wants to do away with the [pension] plan.”

That bit of information makes the NFL look even more like the bad guy in this situation. The replacement refs — mostly Division II and III officials — are almost comically outmatched in their new prime-time roles.

The replacement referees seem downright intimidated by the players, which causes them to lose control of games (see last weekend’s Ravens-Eagles game) and unable to handle the larger rule book of the NFL. They especially had trouble on the NFL’s biggest regular-season stage:  Monday Night Football. In the game between the Denver Broncos and Atlanta Falcons, the replacements were almost obnoxiously slow to get calls, double and triple checking with their fellow refs, which contributed to a one-hour-long first quarter.

Players throughout the league — Washington’s DeAngelo Hall, Cleveland’s Scott Fujita and just about every player on the Ravens, just to name a few — have made their criticisms of the replacements known to the media via interviews and tweets. Hall even went as far as jokingly saying they should start a locker room fund to help the real officials get back on the field.

While missed calls are expected, things such as the phantom pass interference calls seen this week (Ike Taylor in the Steelers-Jets game and Torrey Smith in the Eagles-Ravens game, for example) stand out. LeSean McCoy went on a Philadelphia radio station and said one of the replacement referees told him, “He needed [McCoy] on his fantasy football team.” That’s ridiculous. They already suspended one replacement referee who was to officiate the New Orleans-Carolina game because it was discovered he made his die-hard Saints allegiance — as well as his game assignment, a league violation — known on his Facebook page.

Every time the replacement officials turn the field of play into a circus, another fan will curse Roger Goodell. How much control the commissioner has over the league’s negotiation tactics, I don’t know. But if he gave himself the power to suspend players based on circumstantial evidence (see Jonathan Vilma), he can give himself the power to pay the rightful officials.

Seriously, do this before a player gets hurt or a wrong call directly affects a big game. Or worse, the referees negatively affect the stats of the players on my fantasy team.

Write Donnie at dft6@pitt.edu.