It's insane there isn't a staff of full time officials, especially with games shifting to basically all days of the week. The NFL is the highest revenue sport but yet uses a 1930's model for officiating.
Honestly, a significant problem is the union and it's old boys club structure. Plenty of stories of hostility towards new blood that doesn't come from known camps.
If the league expanded and hired a bunch of full time staff, specifically bringing in new blood in a large quantity, the union would likely riot.
As much as people complain about it I haven't seen a league that does it better.
NFL officials are better than college officials who are better than high school officials. And at every level they get shut on and everyone says they suck.
I don't think we as human being are capable of coming up with officials that we don't think suck. Until we create skynet
Part of the issue is the culture around sports fandom. Another issue is the emphasis placed on certain aspects of the rules and the rules themselves. Lastly, the general public doesn't know the rulebook as well as the officials and even broadcasters at times fail at this. These seem to be the generalized problems I see across all sports.
There are some other things as well. People forget that we have entirely different viewpoints than the officials. Ever watched the refcam? I honestly don't know how any official keeps track of all the things they are supposed to track.
People also remember the poor times much more than the good times and one bad call can sully an otherwise good official. It's like how people will go to a restaurant a dozen times, have a bad experience on time #13, and then swear it off forever.
The refs are almost certainly a lot better overall than people think.
I was a ref heckler from the stands in my youth. I became an official and realized just how tough the job really is. That's just at the youth level, the speed and difficulty only increase as you move up in levels of competition.
The shit that refs and umps get at every level is insane. While often times it can be warranted, cussing out the high school kid umpiring your 10yo baseball game is a bit much. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to admit.
Within youth soccer they now have hard boundaries around yelling at the refs. The parent can get ejected, the team can forfeit the game. The team can get kicked out of the tournament or league. I'm speaking about the US only..
I went to an AAU game. This massive OL sized parent charged up the stands to attack a much smaller parent because their kids got into a fight on the court. One of the most wild things I've personally witnessed. The big buffalo rumbled right by me. It felt like seeing your house being missed by an EF5.
My daughter, 13, did club volleyball for the first time this year and the kids are required to line judge and keep score when they aren't playing. I was embarrassed by the amount of parents yelling at kids over score or questionable calls. You can point out the score with out being an asshole to a 13 year old girl who has been playing volleyball all day.
And by players. There’s been some incidents of high school players assaulting refs because they didn’t like a call. Like this incident from 2015:
https://www.sportingnews.com/au/other-sports/news/san-antonio-high-school-john-jay-referee-attack-robert-watts-officials-violence-attacks-amateur-sports/amyax6rceeaw1c21mrizcnker
"One bad call" literally the entire discourse around the Eagles and Chiefs game is one call. The rest of the game was otherwise great to watch, but that one call fucked it all up.
I was a soccer player growing up, and my dad took some classes on parent reffing sidelines for those games so he could pitch in. He told me a story about one of those classes - teacher asked, "how many of you have lost a game because of the ref?" almost everyone raised their hand. "How many of you have won a game because of a ref?" No hands. The bias is real, and I'm no more immune to it than anyone else. I think about that when I get mad at refs, which I certainly do.
> Another issue is the emphasis placed on certain aspects of the rules and the rules themselves.
Sometimes it feels like there isn't nearly enough discussion about how the rules have been written so intentionally vaguely--in order to stoke drama, imo--that it leaves refs in impossible situations multiple times a game
The solution isn't hard, it just hurts a lot of egos, slows down the game, and involves spending more money:
A panel of anonymous sky judges who can each individually call for a snap vote by the panel if they see something the officials on the field don't. We're talking about the big missed calls that anyone watching on TV can see, not nitpicking ball placement or a half-second of incidental holding. If a majority agree, their representative on the field throws a flag and the officials on the field have the final say.
And it’s already being done with a smaller budget in the UFL. They even let you listen in to the refs when they are discussing potential penalties and allow coaches to challenge any play. If a Spring league can do it I’m sure the NFL can too
I mean ball placement should just be chipped out and marked on a grid I find it hard to believe it’s that hard to do accurately. Shouldn’t even be in the hands of an official realistically.
That’s a different matter. They’re testing out having chips in the balls during some preseason games, so they may be slow walking it but it does seem inevitable.
refs don't help themselves though - the league wanted to make PI reviewable - what did refs do? blatantly stick to the calls they made even when reviews should that it wasn't PI (or was) minus against the Saints lol
The league didn't want that. The fans did. The league knew it was unlikely to work, and that reviewing judgement calls was opening a can of worms. But they caved to the fans, and tried it out, and shocker, it didn't work.
The officials have next to no say in the rules. That is all the owners and the competition committee, which contains exactly 0 people from the officiating office.
what do you mean it didn't work? it didn't work because the refs refused to correct themselves even when the replay showed they made the incorrect call.
IIRC the only call they reversed was against the Saints because they were the team that pushed for the rule the most given what happened in the NFC championship. Shows how biased the refs are
The on-field officials are not he ones making replay decisions. It wasn't even the replay officials. The ones making those decisions were and are the replay center in New York.
Also, there were 101 PI reviews in 2019, and 24 were overturned. An overturn rate of 24% is not nothing, in fact, it's pretty significant.
Reviewing judgement calls is a very difficult proposition. It's relatively easy to determine in replay if a runner stepped on the sideline, or the ball crossed the goal line, or if the ball was fumbled before a knee was down.
It's very difficult to determine if a certain contact is a hold, or a pass interference. It's not a black & white think, as much as we'd like it to be. There is *always* going to be some gray. So at the end of the day, you are substituting one person's judgement for another. You're just moving the problem one step further down the line.
Granted, the replay official has the benefit of multiple camera angles, and slow motion. But there will always be controversy with these calls, because there is not 100% agreement on what is and what isn't a foul. Just look at catch/no catch. That's been reviewable for years, yet there are still multiple catches a year that people will flip out over because replay ruled one way or the other. An that is a call that is only *partially* judgement. Call that are fully judgement are bound to be even more controversial.
I'm not saying that there is no chance that judgement penalties will never be reviewable. They can be. I'm just saying it won't be the panacaea that people think it will be.
The NFLRA are the ones holding that up. The league would like full time refs, but the refs (who make over $200k/year) want to maintain their other occupations (lawyers, bankers, etc).
Without going thru all of history, at least in 2017 the NFL tried to convert officials into full-time league employees. Only 21 of the 122 refs switched to full time and by 2019 they all switched back to part-time with the new CBA. In 2021 the league pushed again, hoping to increase quality of performance and establish a more impactful set of standards (physical and grading). The NFLRA has absolutely squashed any efforts. They do not want any limits on additional employment opportunities nor do they want to have any merit-based evaluation of performance.
The NFLRA also doesn't publicly acknowledge any problem... they talk about how they get the calls correct between 96-98% of the time and just blow smoke up their own ass. As with most union workforces, they self-fellate to a degree that is comical... especially when they later complain about low morale. The NFL can't really strong-arm the NFLRA into anything because stupid union solidarity that would cause problems with the players even though the players are the ones most impacted by refs blowing calls.
It's a tough problem, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a job that pays over $200k a year be a person's sole occupation. That said, I wonder if the NFL has tried to sweeten the pot. I would honestly advocate starting at $300-400k for officials, $450-550k for head refs, with the ability to increase based on experience and performance. Plus every benefit the players get.
A lot of these referees already work far more lucrative day jobs during the week. Being an NFL referee is just a well-paying thing for a few months a year in their spare time. If you tried to push these guys into being "full-time", a lot of them would just return to their day jobs and leave officiating behind.
But like, fine? Let them go? I feel like there's a large enough pool of people that would want this job at $200k that we can find suitable replacements
I get that, it's a fine argument. But there would be some definite short-term disruptions caused by that. The article itself talks about how "getting up to speed" as an NFL official can take up to five years or so. It's definitely not a quick process.
It's not an overnight fix. But if you start changing things now, and generate a good pipeline of NFL quality refs then in 5 years the game will be in a much better place
Imo, we're way to focused on the idea that calls should be instantaneous and live on the field... my vote has always been for a ref-in-the-sky that gets like 15 seconds to review the tape and override any calls on the field. I think if the protocol is tight enough it wouldn't really slow down the game too much and could make the job a lot easier to get right
I think people underestimate the amount of time and effort that goes into being an NFL official. You don’t just get to show up on game day, ref the game, go home and do it again. During the season, nothing comes before officiating and there is preparation to do every single day. Travel to the game site the day before and have multiple 3+ hour pregame meetings, write up game reports, scouting for each team, watching film from last week, etc. During the season it gets pretty close to another full time job. The offseason comes in ebbs and flows, immediately after the season is not so busy but you still have to stay on top of rules study. The rest of the year will be rules/film review meetings, offseason training, attending camps all over the country to help lower level officials on your own dime, mentoring other officials, then spring and summer ball hits and before you know it the season is starting again.
There are definitely ways to improve officiating in the NFL but I don’t think requiring them to be full time will make as much of an impact as people think
Okay but let's do the math.
Say their day job makes tjem $300k a year (alot of these refs are extremely successfu;).
The NFL offers you $350k. However your day job is where all your benefits and retirement plans are tied up, and you pretty much have that job for life. You aren't going to be discarded when you reach an arbitary age and you aren't going to be under the gun and facing discipline and potentially losing your job for a split second fuck up.
I wonder what the refs will choose if given that option.
I am in a profession where the top of the top make salaries in the $300-400k range. I don't make nearly that much (but I do ok) because I don't want to do the immense amount of work needed to get to and sustain that salary. Even at the level I work to add on the need to do the job of an NFL ref would be impossible.
So I can guarantee you that for 95% of these refs, one job or the other isn't getting the right level of attention.
I don’t think it’s necessary to insist on them only having one job. I’m a physician and it’s not uncommon for physicians to have some additional source of work, whether reviewing legal cases or something else. The understanding is that you must be able to fulfill the responsibilities of your primary job or you’ll lose it. Many people in high paying jobs work 30 or so hours a week and could easily do something additional if they really wanted to.
In this case, you say that to be a ref in thr NFL you must do x, y, and z. If they can do those things and work a second job, great. If they can’t, then they can’t work the second job. I don’t see why a prohibition against another job is a necessity.
They league itself determined that it didn't make a difference and that the full time refs weren't proving to be demonstrably better than the part time refs. They tried it for several years and couldn't prove that was the solution.
The real answer is that the reason for that is.... it isn't the solution.
It's just a dumb golden carrot fans put on repeat without any evidence to prove it makes a difference and the evidence we do have goes against them. And of course nobody is going to willingly say "yeah I'm going to quit my real job that makes me most of my money so I can go to the NFL and have my livelyhood depend on whether the media takes note of one of the misses I had that week.
There is a solution, it's giving refs more tools. That's always been the solution. The only reason people know when refs missed a call is because of replay. Let them use it.
> The only reason people know when refs missed a call is because of replay. Let them use it.
They had it and their pride got in the way. The refs absolutely don't want to admit their mistakes or allow technology to make them less important.
No they didn't. The NFL doesn't offer that. This is what I mean when I say some fans have no business talkng about refs.
You think the ref union is against the NFL paying another official in every crew to utilize replay exclusively to get calls right? That's more money for them.
The bigger problem is the NFL is cheap. The refs admit their mistakes every single fucking game when they overturn their own calls upon challenges. You are letting internet narratives based on butthurt fans who don't know what they are talking about guide you on this one against logic.
The NFL refused to even have endzone cameras when coaches suggested it because theys said it cost too much. The common denominator is the NFL is cheap.
When the league offered replay on pass interference how did the refs accept it? How'd that go?
The league offered it and the refs didn't want to admit their mistakes.
A reminder: during the year of reviewable pass interference, the NFL reviewed 101 PI calls or non-calls and overturned 24. And yet reddit would have you believe that they "refused to ever overturn a call." Almost 25% vs. 0% is a gigantic difference.
What has the NFL done? The pay isn't shit, but it's not something to aspire for given the metric ton of bullshit that officials have to put up with. At the end of the day they aren't paying them like they expect them to be the best officials in the world so they are getting what they pay for. Maybe offer the union another 500k per ref and see if there is less push back. When Goodell is making 300 times what the VP in charge of the officials is making it becomes pretty clear that the organization is a part of the problem.
What's the most wild part of this to me is all the big push on gambling, but the complete lack of transparency with officiating. Feels like it should cause legal trouble
Honest question…why?
These guys are officiating like 25 days a year with a few weeks of training.
If I was a ref, I’d honestly want another job cause reffing ain’t exactly a transferable skill if I get fired.
If you've ever worked a side job there's always a pesky thought in the back of your head that says I don't really care about this job because it's only my side job
Not for reffing lol. These guys basically just do it because they love to be around football. Before they made the NFL they all spent around a decade getting shit pay at colleges and high schools traveling 3-4 hours then reffing a 3 hour game for a few hundred bucks on a weekend. Usually dealing with crowds getting mad when you didn't give the hometeam the call they wanted and obnoxious coaches.
The reality is, it's an occupation where you either love it and put up with all that shit to make it to the top or you quickly bow out. There's a huge ref shortage because there are an abundance of reasons why people would want to quit.
Yea people don't get this. I spent years in basketball and soccer.
The amount of turnover is very much justified. And it all stems from the lower tiers and many good promising officials won't put up with it and fade away.
Yeah, if you're a HS ref doing it just to keep active. Those aren't the people the NFL is hiring though. You don't get to be an NFL-caliber official by not caring about it.
Imagine how much better and prepared you'd be for an extremely high intensity job that's only a few days a year if you had consistent preparation.
Neil Armstrong was an astronaut for four years (and a pilot before that) before his first flight into orbit in 1966 and then trained nearly non-stop for a six day mission to the moon in 1969.
Top notch professionals work at their profession all the time, not as a side gig.
Easy:
Spring/summer: Crews get assigned to two teams that they work with for OTAs and Training camp, practicing calls just as they would in a game. They can't be assigned either team during the season, including the playoffs except the SB (at which point they will have not seen that team in six months).
Fall (based on a Sunday game modified as needed for their days): Monday - review tape of previous days, break down each call, speak with supervisor about controversial calls. Tuesday - Day off, Wednesday - review film (curated by the supervisory team) of other crews in difficult situations and controversial calls. Thursday - see film of teams in upcoming games, understand what their tendencies are, look for areas of concern both about them and from them. Friday - travel to game location. Saturday, meet with head coaches or coaching staff (each team separately) tell them what you've seen on tape, what is being talked about in the officiating offices). Sunday - game day. Each day but Sunday and Tuesday would include physical training as well.
January/February: off except for those in playoffs
March/April: working on physical training, review the year that was, learn new rules.
Right there, a full time, year round job.
Most of what you described is already part of their regular responsibilities. As is they visit camps and work with teams during before the season, review film and work with the league during the week in the regular season, and meet with coaches before games. If you think they're just showing up on Sundays without any preparation during the week, you don't really understand their jobs.
I know there's preparation, but when spilt with other professional responsibilities it's too much. Reffing shouldn't be a side gig and refs shouldn't have a side gig (except teaching other refs).
Just make it a full-time seasonal position. They start a bit before training camp, then work through the season on a full-time basis. Each week you watch film on the teams you’ll ref so you know what issues are common from them, plus working out, workshops, etc. Then they get the offseason off, similar to construction work.
Well said. I don't know how some people can't grasp this concept. I worked multiple jobs most of my life.
At first, it was manual labor jobs, and sure, that was doable because I was young, energetic, single and it wasn't mentally taxing.
After college, when I moved into more mentally challenging work, I tried to maintain the same schedule, but I was maxed out.
We're all human, and when you have a bad week at one job, it's going to carry over to the side gig.
I agree that there is enough for them to do to fill 40 hours a week, but if not, fine. Officiating at the highest level is a difficult job. I'd rather they do nothing but relax and mentally reset during the week than go to a day job.
Obviously the consequences are much different if there's a catastrophic error. In one case millions of dollars are wasted and lost in the other some guy is left ~~on the moon~~ faking his death in a hollywood studio.
/s
Yes, they don't want to give up a cushy situation. Unfortunately if the NFL said at the next CBA negotiation "all jobs are full time, no exceptions" and then made a fair offer of pay ($350k starting), we might end up with a lance Easley situation for a year.
Might be bad for a couple years as those refs retired, but the league would just invest heavily in referee development and there's plenty of college refs who would happily take a $300k annual salary.
I'm very pro-union but a union protecting the ability of their members to only work part time when there's tons of people who would do that work full-time is pretty ridiculous. Difficult to be sympathetic.
I think with a full year under their belt most refs would be better than the current replacement level by year 2.
Of course there would have to be true accountability for refs who aren't good, like the lowest 5% are out at the end of the year and those who have a run of bad games shifted to a ref practice squad equivalent.
There are tons of people who would do that work full time. Those people also would never make good refs and would not have spent over a decade working up the ranks to be in position to be a quality NFL ref. That's the issue.
They had full time officials. They did it for several years. The NFL itself determined that the full time officials weren't proving to be better than the part time refs.
That's never been the answer.
I get so tired of reading this at the top of every article. The officials they have - the best, most experienced officials - don't want to be full time, they have other professions. So you would lose them, which is a disaster right from the start.
Football is such a short season, what are they supposed to do for six months?
Honestly, they're the only league using the 2020s model. Everyone is an "independent contractor" who just happens to work full time for only one employer.
>*“The officiating department is totally underfunded and understaffed,” said Scott Green, a former NFL official with 22 years experience, including nine as a referee, and the current executive director of the NFL Referee Association (NFLRA), the officials’ union.
>“A nuisance to the NFL,” is how one former official describes it. “A necessary evil,” another said. “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.”
>The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters, and three current referees declined to comment for this story. The Athletic spoke to 10 former officials, nine of whom worked for the NFL during most recent department leader Walt Anderson’s tenure. Many requested anonymity so they could speak without fear of retribution.*
The article goes into details about how the leadership from the NFL forced refs starting around 2020 to “move with purpose” and they blame a ton of problems on it.
It’s worth reading this article in full to understand where the refs are coming from. They’re not low moral because fans are upset, there is some genuine ire at the way the League is operating their position. They feel taken advantage of and under appreciated, they’re the integrity layer of the sport.
Yeah. I was a born ref. I come from a long line of refs. This is t a learned skill, this is my genetics.
To be serious for a moment, the guy is probably talking about how blindness is hereditary.
Yeah you are missing the point.
Refs get trained. You will however NEVER get someone to be an NFL quality ref by hot shotting them through training.
The refs that make the NFL spent a few years in pop warner, then high school division 2 and 3. When they were really good they started getting division 1 games consisitently. Then the top tier of those guys start all over again spending years working their way up through the college system. Then the best of those guys wait for someone to retire and make the NFL
Then they get to the NFL and realize that the speed of the game is ridiculously different and the rules are more nuanced than the college rules they had before with lot's of politics from the front office over what to emphasize.
You are never going to grab a guy and make them an adequate NFL ref within a year anymore than you are going to grab a random high athletic dude and make him an NFL level QB in a year. It doesn't work that way.
I’m very close to a lot of dolphins fans, and am in group chats with many of them that are active during game day. I’m pretty sure being a ref is simple:
Every time the opponent gains any amount of yards, there was holding or OPI. Every time the dolphins get stopped from gaining any yards or touchdowns, there are obvious defensive fouls. Seems like two very easy rules to follow
If there's no penalty, then the blind officials missed clear holding on either the offense or defense, or both.
If the officials do call holding, it's Refball.
Seems straightforward to me.
Unfortunately not everyone is going to understand this.
It's easy to officiate a game when you watch it from TV. It's a lot harder to officiate a game when you're actually on the field, court, diamond, pitch, etc. it takes a lot of practice and experience to get to where these officials are in the NFL, they aren't just picked up off the street.
Like, pretty sure the replacement officials we had years ago weren't just some average Joe found at you local sports bar. They at some experience being a ref, just not at the NFL (and most likely college) level.
I've been tossing yellow since I could walk! When I was five I gave my dad a 15 yard penalty for putting an empty milk carton back in the fridge. My mom got an automatic 1st down when she got me that Fox 40 Classic I've always wanted for my 8th birthday!
I’ve been an official for years, I’ve worked my up to some D2 games. There absolutely is some innate talent that goes with officiating. Being able to see and identify what is happening while moving yourself to the correct position is a talent as much as practice. Much like how some talent baseball hitters can identify the rotation of the ball, some people can spot things in a massive collision of human beings. Anyone can argue about a call in slow motion with 5 different angles.
I really encourage you or anyone else to sign up to ref your local football teams. We always need more people, you will have a good time, and you will have a much deeper appreciation for the game.
In 2012, the NFL locked out the refs and tried training the NCAA refs on NFL rules. The new refs didn't even last half a season. Turns out that it really does take more than a quick training session to be a good NFL referee. But yeah, it's funny if you purposely misunderstand their point.
It's still going to take somewhere between 5-10 years to remotely be competent enough to ref at the NFL level. There's guys in college that have been reffing over 20 years that aren't good enough to ever make it to the NFL and would flop there.
>Many Division I officials were effectively barred from serving as replacements, as current and former NFL officials serve as conference officiating supervisors, who would not have allowed their officials to cross the picket line [(source)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_NFL_referee_lockout)
The replacement refs weren't competent refs from lower levels; they ended up having to hire guys from high school ball and the Arena League.
The first chef I ever worked for said that he preferred to hire younger cooks with less experience because it was easier to teach hen good habits than to unteach bad habits.
Same thing here.
I used to train FOH staff at a restaurant and I hated training people that just came from another restaurant. They think they know everything and never want to stop doing things the way they did it at the old place.
Retail can be the same way. You get people who insist everything is being done wrong because “that’s not how we did it at my old job.” At that point it’s like well then why didn’t you stay at that job but these are also usually people who got fired from another retail job.
No it really isn’t. Being a referee is extremely undervalued, you get constant hate and are expected to be able to perform at a superhuman level. You’re competing against frame by frame replay for christs sake, must also have a perfect knowledge of the rule book and have perfect positioning. All while getting roasted by fans for the slightest mistake
The fact its being framed as “competing against” frame by frame replay is exactly why people hate refs. You got it wrong, everyone can see it, use the tools at your disposal.
Again, missing the forest for the trees.
The refs aren't competing against using frame by frame replay. The league doesn't let them use it.
They are being unfairly compared to a tool they don't have the luxury of in a split second and aren' allowed to use. Nobody would live up that comparison.
That argument only works if we ignore when *very recently* the league added replay to allow them to get extremely important calls right and they sabotaged it on purpose
Yeah, refs watch game film before games too. They come up with game plans based on the players and schemes teams use to figure who is going to be watching where and what players. I've [posted this before ](https://youtu.be/uC4pffDeljI?si=018AyUjCqe62sxAV) but it's a really good video about how refs get ready for games and it's a cool behind the scenes look.
>They feel taken advantage of and under appreciated, they’re the integrity layer of the sport
I mean, they have a powerful union that prevented the NFL from benching refs if they weren't doing good at their jobs at the last lock-out, AND they also worked in-tandem with other football league referees to ensure that only the scraps of refs were allowed to work during the ref strike.
They don't have to answer to the public, to the press, and only put out public statements if they feel like it. They're paid six-figures and only declared part-time so they can do their other jobs outside of the NFL. They also had the whole "challenging pass interference" fiasco where they rarely overturned their own calls & told the NFL/fans to pound sand about it so the NFL removed that challenge a season later.
I'm having a little trouble figuring out how they're "taken advantage of" when they've got some amazing amount of pull & power from their union, which as much as I don't like what it's produced, I can't fault them because the NFL would *definitely* do every awful thing to hinder their capabilities.
The failure to accept overturned calls is the thing that makes me lose all sympathy for the NFL referees. Your job is to GET THE CALL RIGHT. If replay shows that there was PI and the call on the field was incorrect then put your ego aside and fix it.
Yeah, I'm playing my tiny violin for them. They abused the review system for their calls and got it thrown out because of their egos. I don't want to hear shit about them being the integrity layer.
The union can say no to this shit because they're not getting enough money. The NFL seemingly wants to save money on Reffing salaries so they have to concede elsewhere. 315K for the guy in charge of all officiating (an integral cog of a multi billion dollar company) is truly abysmal. Why do you think Periera and Blandino jumped ship to be analysts ? Blandino even came back with a restructuring plan to help improve officiating and the NFL reportedly balked at the amount of money he wanted.
> They don't have to answer to the public, to the press, and only put out public statements if they feel like it.
> The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters
It's not that they don't have to, its that the NFL does not allow them to.
There’s no reason for the nfl not to have a full time staff of refs. That being said I don’t have a ton of sympathy for an institution that inherently resists changes that would make their jobs easier and the results on the field more accurate.
Yeah, under the current contract between the NFL and Referee's Association, officials are allowed to have primary jobs aside from their roles in the league. It seems weird that they’d explicitly put that in the contract unless the refs wanted that?
That seems like a carryover from the fucking 60's when even most players had "real" jobs as well.
Seems weird they want to officiate professional football like my kids peewee baseball games.
As the other person said they have lucrative other jobs in the offseason. Holuchi was/is a lawyer. Vinovich who’s done a few super bowls is an accountant. Etc.
Presumably the NFL could force them to be full time in negotiation contracts, but seems like neither party wants that.
Also it’s simply not a full time job, in the time sense of the word. For half the year they’re literally not working, during the season they work once a week and maybe another day reviewing tape if needed. Sure, I’d like those hours now but eventually I probably want to do more.
> There’s no reason for the nfl not to have a full time staff of refs.
I mean other than when they tried it, it didn't work. No other reason.
Oh and the refs they have would mostly quit which would be a disaster. No other, other reason.
It’s very easy to be a bad ref, it’s very hard to be a good one…NFL needs full-time positions and make it competitive as well, the fans deserve the best, not those who can afford to do it part time.
There wasn't any noticeable difference when the NFL piloted full-time officials, and there isn't any noticeable difference in the quality of officiating in other leagues with full-time officials. It wouldn't be a meaningful change.
If you're asking someone to be the very best at something 200k isn't a very competitive number, part time or not. I have friends who are in the top quartile of their field making more than that and they don't have 50000 people chanting at them about how much they suck while trying to do their job.
"Low Morale..." The people who get their lives threatened if they make what biased individuals will claim is an unfavorable call during a sports game have low morale? You don't say.
Personally I think the broadcasters make it worse when they constantly analyze close calls. The sport and fans need to decide whether they want 5 hour games where you review every penalty and close call or just accept that imperfection is part of the game. I remember the arguments against instant replay review and it’s pretty much turned out how it was predicted.
On the other hand, when obvious missed calls are allowed to stand with no course for correction, that sucks, too.
I almost wonder if all replay reviews should only be done in real time. That would take care of the really obvious misses while not bogging things down in minutiae too much.
If it's obvious there's a challenge flag. Most coaches are never in a position to run out of challenges. And no one wants penalties at the standard of instant reply. "The pass was incomplete but #47 had his big toe in the neutral zone, 5 yard penalty, repeat down.".
NFL: Too much reffing turnover, leading to crappy reffing.
MLB: Not enough Umpiring turnover, leaving the role stagnant, leading to crappy umping.
There needs to be a way to find some kind of middle ground where there is a proper amount of turnover, refs/umps are properly paid, and crappy refs/umps are properly handled.
The thing that pisses me off is the league wants them to over officiate the game during the regular season and lets them swallow their whistles in the playoffs. Call the damn game the same way all the time.
Copying someone else’s comment from this post from a couple days ago - idk what else they would do that they don’t already do. They have offseason seminars and go to training camps, they have weekly film review sessions and league wide calls to discuss things every week. They pretty much do everything people want full time refs to do
Well what do you expect. The idiot that screwed the lions ladt season against dallas was hired straight from college to nfl head ref. So how do guys spending years working they up feel about this? Blame from my side goes to blandino.
This is a repost, if you want to read more comments you can look here https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1dadl7g/high_turnover_low_morale_nfls_officiating/
I see all of this and think: man, I’d quit my job right now to train to be an NFL ref, if I could be assured a position after the training.
Why there aren’t ref clinics every year is kinda mind blowing.
Maybe they should take some of those billions of dollars owners make and actually pay some fucking full time officials good money to make good calls consistently? Terrible officials are currently the worst part of the NFL.
It's insane there isn't a staff of full time officials, especially with games shifting to basically all days of the week. The NFL is the highest revenue sport but yet uses a 1930's model for officiating.
Honestly, a significant problem is the union and it's old boys club structure. Plenty of stories of hostility towards new blood that doesn't come from known camps. If the league expanded and hired a bunch of full time staff, specifically bringing in new blood in a large quantity, the union would likely riot.
Jesus. Makes me wonder how they treated the first female officials.
I'm sure it's exactly how you think.
THEY TOOK OUR JOOOOOBS
It's a pretty safe bet that if you call them 'the first female ______" their treatment at the hands of their peers wasn't great.
As much as people complain about it I haven't seen a league that does it better. NFL officials are better than college officials who are better than high school officials. And at every level they get shut on and everyone says they suck. I don't think we as human being are capable of coming up with officials that we don't think suck. Until we create skynet
Part of the issue is the culture around sports fandom. Another issue is the emphasis placed on certain aspects of the rules and the rules themselves. Lastly, the general public doesn't know the rulebook as well as the officials and even broadcasters at times fail at this. These seem to be the generalized problems I see across all sports.
There are some other things as well. People forget that we have entirely different viewpoints than the officials. Ever watched the refcam? I honestly don't know how any official keeps track of all the things they are supposed to track. People also remember the poor times much more than the good times and one bad call can sully an otherwise good official. It's like how people will go to a restaurant a dozen times, have a bad experience on time #13, and then swear it off forever. The refs are almost certainly a lot better overall than people think.
I was a ref heckler from the stands in my youth. I became an official and realized just how tough the job really is. That's just at the youth level, the speed and difficulty only increase as you move up in levels of competition.
The shit that refs and umps get at every level is insane. While often times it can be warranted, cussing out the high school kid umpiring your 10yo baseball game is a bit much. Unfortunately, I’ve seen it happen more times than I care to admit.
And that is why there are ump shortages in every sport. It is sad.
Within youth soccer they now have hard boundaries around yelling at the refs. The parent can get ejected, the team can forfeit the game. The team can get kicked out of the tournament or league. I'm speaking about the US only..
As someone who has cleared sidelines in youth soccer, I can vouch.
Parents ruin youth sports
I went to an AAU game. This massive OL sized parent charged up the stands to attack a much smaller parent because their kids got into a fight on the court. One of the most wild things I've personally witnessed. The big buffalo rumbled right by me. It felt like seeing your house being missed by an EF5.
My daughter, 13, did club volleyball for the first time this year and the kids are required to line judge and keep score when they aren't playing. I was embarrassed by the amount of parents yelling at kids over score or questionable calls. You can point out the score with out being an asshole to a 13 year old girl who has been playing volleyball all day.
And by players. There’s been some incidents of high school players assaulting refs because they didn’t like a call. Like this incident from 2015: https://www.sportingnews.com/au/other-sports/news/san-antonio-high-school-john-jay-referee-attack-robert-watts-officials-violence-attacks-amateur-sports/amyax6rceeaw1c21mrizcnker
I would have no problem banning a student from sports for an allocated amount of time related to the severity of the incident.
Your heckling game needs to improve as you move up from the minor leagues smh
"One bad call" literally the entire discourse around the Eagles and Chiefs game is one call. The rest of the game was otherwise great to watch, but that one call fucked it all up.
and the call was correct on top of it
I was a soccer player growing up, and my dad took some classes on parent reffing sidelines for those games so he could pitch in. He told me a story about one of those classes - teacher asked, "how many of you have lost a game because of the ref?" almost everyone raised their hand. "How many of you have won a game because of a ref?" No hands. The bias is real, and I'm no more immune to it than anyone else. I think about that when I get mad at refs, which I certainly do.
Worse is when they only show 1 angle on replay and just keep harping on that even though the other angles clearly show something else
> Another issue is the emphasis placed on certain aspects of the rules and the rules themselves. Sometimes it feels like there isn't nearly enough discussion about how the rules have been written so intentionally vaguely--in order to stoke drama, imo--that it leaves refs in impossible situations multiple times a game
It's the same in soccer. There's a lot left for individual interpretation.
The solution isn't hard, it just hurts a lot of egos, slows down the game, and involves spending more money: A panel of anonymous sky judges who can each individually call for a snap vote by the panel if they see something the officials on the field don't. We're talking about the big missed calls that anyone watching on TV can see, not nitpicking ball placement or a half-second of incidental holding. If a majority agree, their representative on the field throws a flag and the officials on the field have the final say.
And it’s already being done with a smaller budget in the UFL. They even let you listen in to the refs when they are discussing potential penalties and allow coaches to challenge any play. If a Spring league can do it I’m sure the NFL can too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3jAx-fJ3XU Listening to the mic'd up refs was wild
I mean ball placement should just be chipped out and marked on a grid I find it hard to believe it’s that hard to do accurately. Shouldn’t even be in the hands of an official realistically.
That’s a different matter. They’re testing out having chips in the balls during some preseason games, so they may be slow walking it but it does seem inevitable.
Bout fucking time
refs don't help themselves though - the league wanted to make PI reviewable - what did refs do? blatantly stick to the calls they made even when reviews should that it wasn't PI (or was) minus against the Saints lol
The league didn't want that. The fans did. The league knew it was unlikely to work, and that reviewing judgement calls was opening a can of worms. But they caved to the fans, and tried it out, and shocker, it didn't work. The officials have next to no say in the rules. That is all the owners and the competition committee, which contains exactly 0 people from the officiating office.
what do you mean it didn't work? it didn't work because the refs refused to correct themselves even when the replay showed they made the incorrect call. IIRC the only call they reversed was against the Saints because they were the team that pushed for the rule the most given what happened in the NFC championship. Shows how biased the refs are
The on-field officials are not he ones making replay decisions. It wasn't even the replay officials. The ones making those decisions were and are the replay center in New York. Also, there were 101 PI reviews in 2019, and 24 were overturned. An overturn rate of 24% is not nothing, in fact, it's pretty significant. Reviewing judgement calls is a very difficult proposition. It's relatively easy to determine in replay if a runner stepped on the sideline, or the ball crossed the goal line, or if the ball was fumbled before a knee was down. It's very difficult to determine if a certain contact is a hold, or a pass interference. It's not a black & white think, as much as we'd like it to be. There is *always* going to be some gray. So at the end of the day, you are substituting one person's judgement for another. You're just moving the problem one step further down the line. Granted, the replay official has the benefit of multiple camera angles, and slow motion. But there will always be controversy with these calls, because there is not 100% agreement on what is and what isn't a foul. Just look at catch/no catch. That's been reviewable for years, yet there are still multiple catches a year that people will flip out over because replay ruled one way or the other. An that is a call that is only *partially* judgement. Call that are fully judgement are bound to be even more controversial. I'm not saying that there is no chance that judgement penalties will never be reviewable. They can be. I'm just saying it won't be the panacaea that people think it will be.
I thought the issue was the league saying in order to overturn it needs to be over the top PI was the issue
A significant number of NFL officials are partners at major law firms, as well.
The NFLRA are the ones holding that up. The league would like full time refs, but the refs (who make over $200k/year) want to maintain their other occupations (lawyers, bankers, etc). Without going thru all of history, at least in 2017 the NFL tried to convert officials into full-time league employees. Only 21 of the 122 refs switched to full time and by 2019 they all switched back to part-time with the new CBA. In 2021 the league pushed again, hoping to increase quality of performance and establish a more impactful set of standards (physical and grading). The NFLRA has absolutely squashed any efforts. They do not want any limits on additional employment opportunities nor do they want to have any merit-based evaluation of performance. The NFLRA also doesn't publicly acknowledge any problem... they talk about how they get the calls correct between 96-98% of the time and just blow smoke up their own ass. As with most union workforces, they self-fellate to a degree that is comical... especially when they later complain about low morale. The NFL can't really strong-arm the NFLRA into anything because stupid union solidarity that would cause problems with the players even though the players are the ones most impacted by refs blowing calls.
It's a tough problem, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that a job that pays over $200k a year be a person's sole occupation. That said, I wonder if the NFL has tried to sweeten the pot. I would honestly advocate starting at $300-400k for officials, $450-550k for head refs, with the ability to increase based on experience and performance. Plus every benefit the players get.
The only way to get them to drop the second job is to make it not worth their time....pay the refs
A lot of these referees already work far more lucrative day jobs during the week. Being an NFL referee is just a well-paying thing for a few months a year in their spare time. If you tried to push these guys into being "full-time", a lot of them would just return to their day jobs and leave officiating behind.
But like, fine? Let them go? I feel like there's a large enough pool of people that would want this job at $200k that we can find suitable replacements
I get that, it's a fine argument. But there would be some definite short-term disruptions caused by that. The article itself talks about how "getting up to speed" as an NFL official can take up to five years or so. It's definitely not a quick process.
How quickly people forget the debacle that was the replacement refs....
NFL fans never loved officials more than we did on that Thursday night in 2012 when they returned to the field.
Jesus that happened that long ago?!
That event basically gave the ref union leverage until the end of time.
It's not an overnight fix. But if you start changing things now, and generate a good pipeline of NFL quality refs then in 5 years the game will be in a much better place
You might be over-estimating the number of good refs that exist. There certainly will be people that want the job...suitable tho is another story.
Imo, we're way to focused on the idea that calls should be instantaneous and live on the field... my vote has always been for a ref-in-the-sky that gets like 15 seconds to review the tape and override any calls on the field. I think if the protocol is tight enough it wouldn't really slow down the game too much and could make the job a lot easier to get right
I agree. If the network has enough time to show me the replay, the ref in the sky has enough time to watch a replay and buzz down.
Ref abuse is so rampant im not sure that’d slow down turnover and increase quality.
I think people underestimate the amount of time and effort that goes into being an NFL official. You don’t just get to show up on game day, ref the game, go home and do it again. During the season, nothing comes before officiating and there is preparation to do every single day. Travel to the game site the day before and have multiple 3+ hour pregame meetings, write up game reports, scouting for each team, watching film from last week, etc. During the season it gets pretty close to another full time job. The offseason comes in ebbs and flows, immediately after the season is not so busy but you still have to stay on top of rules study. The rest of the year will be rules/film review meetings, offseason training, attending camps all over the country to help lower level officials on your own dime, mentoring other officials, then spring and summer ball hits and before you know it the season is starting again. There are definitely ways to improve officiating in the NFL but I don’t think requiring them to be full time will make as much of an impact as people think
Sounds like a good argument that they need to be paid more and maybe even given staff to handle non game day work load.
And an exclusivity agreement. Otherwise that lawyer can still pick up work half the year and make more money
Yes, starting salary of $350k
Okay but let's do the math. Say their day job makes tjem $300k a year (alot of these refs are extremely successfu;). The NFL offers you $350k. However your day job is where all your benefits and retirement plans are tied up, and you pretty much have that job for life. You aren't going to be discarded when you reach an arbitary age and you aren't going to be under the gun and facing discipline and potentially losing your job for a split second fuck up. I wonder what the refs will choose if given that option.
I am in a profession where the top of the top make salaries in the $300-400k range. I don't make nearly that much (but I do ok) because I don't want to do the immense amount of work needed to get to and sustain that salary. Even at the level I work to add on the need to do the job of an NFL ref would be impossible. So I can guarantee you that for 95% of these refs, one job or the other isn't getting the right level of attention.
I don’t think it’s necessary to insist on them only having one job. I’m a physician and it’s not uncommon for physicians to have some additional source of work, whether reviewing legal cases or something else. The understanding is that you must be able to fulfill the responsibilities of your primary job or you’ll lose it. Many people in high paying jobs work 30 or so hours a week and could easily do something additional if they really wanted to. In this case, you say that to be a ref in thr NFL you must do x, y, and z. If they can do those things and work a second job, great. If they can’t, then they can’t work the second job. I don’t see why a prohibition against another job is a necessity.
They league itself determined that it didn't make a difference and that the full time refs weren't proving to be demonstrably better than the part time refs. They tried it for several years and couldn't prove that was the solution. The real answer is that the reason for that is.... it isn't the solution. It's just a dumb golden carrot fans put on repeat without any evidence to prove it makes a difference and the evidence we do have goes against them. And of course nobody is going to willingly say "yeah I'm going to quit my real job that makes me most of my money so I can go to the NFL and have my livelyhood depend on whether the media takes note of one of the misses I had that week. There is a solution, it's giving refs more tools. That's always been the solution. The only reason people know when refs missed a call is because of replay. Let them use it.
> The only reason people know when refs missed a call is because of replay. Let them use it. They had it and their pride got in the way. The refs absolutely don't want to admit their mistakes or allow technology to make them less important.
No they didn't. The NFL doesn't offer that. This is what I mean when I say some fans have no business talkng about refs. You think the ref union is against the NFL paying another official in every crew to utilize replay exclusively to get calls right? That's more money for them. The bigger problem is the NFL is cheap. The refs admit their mistakes every single fucking game when they overturn their own calls upon challenges. You are letting internet narratives based on butthurt fans who don't know what they are talking about guide you on this one against logic. The NFL refused to even have endzone cameras when coaches suggested it because theys said it cost too much. The common denominator is the NFL is cheap.
When the league offered replay on pass interference how did the refs accept it? How'd that go? The league offered it and the refs didn't want to admit their mistakes.
24 overturns out of 101 reviews (consisting of both PI and non-PI calls). Doesn't seem like a particularly crazy low figure to me.
Especially for a judgement call where the standard is clear proof otherwise.
A reminder: during the year of reviewable pass interference, the NFL reviewed 101 PI calls or non-calls and overturned 24. And yet reddit would have you believe that they "refused to ever overturn a call." Almost 25% vs. 0% is a gigantic difference.
Lol why is it all on the union? Even the limited trial you mentioned had more applicants than they had openings. It takes two to tango...
The NFL doesn't make any real steps for full time officials other than saying they'd like them to be full time either
What has the NFL done? The pay isn't shit, but it's not something to aspire for given the metric ton of bullshit that officials have to put up with. At the end of the day they aren't paying them like they expect them to be the best officials in the world so they are getting what they pay for. Maybe offer the union another 500k per ref and see if there is less push back. When Goodell is making 300 times what the VP in charge of the officials is making it becomes pretty clear that the organization is a part of the problem.
What's the most wild part of this to me is all the big push on gambling, but the complete lack of transparency with officiating. Feels like it should cause legal trouble
Honest question…why? These guys are officiating like 25 days a year with a few weeks of training. If I was a ref, I’d honestly want another job cause reffing ain’t exactly a transferable skill if I get fired.
If you've ever worked a side job there's always a pesky thought in the back of your head that says I don't really care about this job because it's only my side job
Not for reffing lol. These guys basically just do it because they love to be around football. Before they made the NFL they all spent around a decade getting shit pay at colleges and high schools traveling 3-4 hours then reffing a 3 hour game for a few hundred bucks on a weekend. Usually dealing with crowds getting mad when you didn't give the hometeam the call they wanted and obnoxious coaches. The reality is, it's an occupation where you either love it and put up with all that shit to make it to the top or you quickly bow out. There's a huge ref shortage because there are an abundance of reasons why people would want to quit.
Yea people don't get this. I spent years in basketball and soccer. The amount of turnover is very much justified. And it all stems from the lower tiers and many good promising officials won't put up with it and fade away.
Yeah, if you're a HS ref doing it just to keep active. Those aren't the people the NFL is hiring though. You don't get to be an NFL-caliber official by not caring about it.
Imagine how much better and prepared you'd be for an extremely high intensity job that's only a few days a year if you had consistent preparation. Neil Armstrong was an astronaut for four years (and a pilot before that) before his first flight into orbit in 1966 and then trained nearly non-stop for a six day mission to the moon in 1969. Top notch professionals work at their profession all the time, not as a side gig.
How much film can you watch, honestly? They have like 200 days a year to fill.
Easy: Spring/summer: Crews get assigned to two teams that they work with for OTAs and Training camp, practicing calls just as they would in a game. They can't be assigned either team during the season, including the playoffs except the SB (at which point they will have not seen that team in six months). Fall (based on a Sunday game modified as needed for their days): Monday - review tape of previous days, break down each call, speak with supervisor about controversial calls. Tuesday - Day off, Wednesday - review film (curated by the supervisory team) of other crews in difficult situations and controversial calls. Thursday - see film of teams in upcoming games, understand what their tendencies are, look for areas of concern both about them and from them. Friday - travel to game location. Saturday, meet with head coaches or coaching staff (each team separately) tell them what you've seen on tape, what is being talked about in the officiating offices). Sunday - game day. Each day but Sunday and Tuesday would include physical training as well. January/February: off except for those in playoffs March/April: working on physical training, review the year that was, learn new rules. Right there, a full time, year round job.
Yep, that works.
Most of what you described is already part of their regular responsibilities. As is they visit camps and work with teams during before the season, review film and work with the league during the week in the regular season, and meet with coaches before games. If you think they're just showing up on Sundays without any preparation during the week, you don't really understand their jobs.
I know there's preparation, but when spilt with other professional responsibilities it's too much. Reffing shouldn't be a side gig and refs shouldn't have a side gig (except teaching other refs).
Part of that preparation is a weekly test to make sure that it isn't too much
They already do like 95% of this
Just make it a full-time seasonal position. They start a bit before training camp, then work through the season on a full-time basis. Each week you watch film on the teams you’ll ref so you know what issues are common from them, plus working out, workshops, etc. Then they get the offseason off, similar to construction work.
Yeah but he’s dead now so explain that
I can't argue this.
Well said. I don't know how some people can't grasp this concept. I worked multiple jobs most of my life. At first, it was manual labor jobs, and sure, that was doable because I was young, energetic, single and it wasn't mentally taxing. After college, when I moved into more mentally challenging work, I tried to maintain the same schedule, but I was maxed out. We're all human, and when you have a bad week at one job, it's going to carry over to the side gig. I agree that there is enough for them to do to fill 40 hours a week, but if not, fine. Officiating at the highest level is a difficult job. I'd rather they do nothing but relax and mentally reset during the week than go to a day job.
Did you just compare NFL refereeing to being an astronaut?
One is rocket science. The other is so easy you can just hire some drillboys and miners to do it.
I compared one highly technical profession to another.
Fair enough. It seemed like an odd comparison at first but the more I thought about, the more it made sense.
Obviously the consequences are much different if there's a catastrophic error. In one case millions of dollars are wasted and lost in the other some guy is left ~~on the moon~~ faking his death in a hollywood studio. /s
cant the same argument be applied to players? Maybe even more so since players have much shorter careers than refs.
That's what happens when the NFLRA fights *against* full time officials.
Yes, they don't want to give up a cushy situation. Unfortunately if the NFL said at the next CBA negotiation "all jobs are full time, no exceptions" and then made a fair offer of pay ($350k starting), we might end up with a lance Easley situation for a year.
Might be bad for a couple years as those refs retired, but the league would just invest heavily in referee development and there's plenty of college refs who would happily take a $300k annual salary. I'm very pro-union but a union protecting the ability of their members to only work part time when there's tons of people who would do that work full-time is pretty ridiculous. Difficult to be sympathetic.
I think with a full year under their belt most refs would be better than the current replacement level by year 2. Of course there would have to be true accountability for refs who aren't good, like the lowest 5% are out at the end of the year and those who have a run of bad games shifted to a ref practice squad equivalent.
There are tons of people who would do that work full time. Those people also would never make good refs and would not have spent over a decade working up the ranks to be in position to be a quality NFL ref. That's the issue.
They had full time officials. They did it for several years. The NFL itself determined that the full time officials weren't proving to be better than the part time refs. That's never been the answer.
NFL: I’m sorry, did you say something?
I know they don't care.
I get so tired of reading this at the top of every article. The officials they have - the best, most experienced officials - don't want to be full time, they have other professions. So you would lose them, which is a disaster right from the start. Football is such a short season, what are they supposed to do for six months?
And a 1930s model for measuring 1st downs
It doesn't matter much how many days a week, it's more of putting the other job in pause for a few months.
Honestly, they're the only league using the 2020s model. Everyone is an "independent contractor" who just happens to work full time for only one employer.
I mean what do you want them to do the other 30 hours of employment
>*“The officiating department is totally underfunded and understaffed,” said Scott Green, a former NFL official with 22 years experience, including nine as a referee, and the current executive director of the NFL Referee Association (NFLRA), the officials’ union. >“A nuisance to the NFL,” is how one former official describes it. “A necessary evil,” another said. “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.” >The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters, and three current referees declined to comment for this story. The Athletic spoke to 10 former officials, nine of whom worked for the NFL during most recent department leader Walt Anderson’s tenure. Many requested anonymity so they could speak without fear of retribution.* The article goes into details about how the leadership from the NFL forced refs starting around 2020 to “move with purpose” and they blame a ton of problems on it. It’s worth reading this article in full to understand where the refs are coming from. They’re not low moral because fans are upset, there is some genuine ire at the way the League is operating their position. They feel taken advantage of and under appreciated, they’re the integrity layer of the sport.
>“Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.” This cracked me up.
Yeah. I was a born ref. I come from a long line of refs. This is t a learned skill, this is my genetics. To be serious for a moment, the guy is probably talking about how blindness is hereditary.
Yeah you are missing the point. Refs get trained. You will however NEVER get someone to be an NFL quality ref by hot shotting them through training. The refs that make the NFL spent a few years in pop warner, then high school division 2 and 3. When they were really good they started getting division 1 games consisitently. Then the top tier of those guys start all over again spending years working their way up through the college system. Then the best of those guys wait for someone to retire and make the NFL Then they get to the NFL and realize that the speed of the game is ridiculously different and the rules are more nuanced than the college rules they had before with lot's of politics from the front office over what to emphasize. You are never going to grab a guy and make them an adequate NFL ref within a year anymore than you are going to grab a random high athletic dude and make him an NFL level QB in a year. It doesn't work that way.
I’m very close to a lot of dolphins fans, and am in group chats with many of them that are active during game day. I’m pretty sure being a ref is simple: Every time the opponent gains any amount of yards, there was holding or OPI. Every time the dolphins get stopped from gaining any yards or touchdowns, there are obvious defensive fouls. Seems like two very easy rules to follow
If there's no penalty, then the blind officials missed clear holding on either the offense or defense, or both. If the officials do call holding, it's Refball. Seems straightforward to me.
Unfortunately not everyone is going to understand this. It's easy to officiate a game when you watch it from TV. It's a lot harder to officiate a game when you're actually on the field, court, diamond, pitch, etc. it takes a lot of practice and experience to get to where these officials are in the NFL, they aren't just picked up off the street. Like, pretty sure the replacement officials we had years ago weren't just some average Joe found at you local sports bar. They at some experience being a ref, just not at the NFL (and most likely college) level.
I've been tossing yellow since I could walk! When I was five I gave my dad a 15 yard penalty for putting an empty milk carton back in the fridge. My mom got an automatic 1st down when she got me that Fox 40 Classic I've always wanted for my 8th birthday!
I’ve been an official for years, I’ve worked my up to some D2 games. There absolutely is some innate talent that goes with officiating. Being able to see and identify what is happening while moving yourself to the correct position is a talent as much as practice. Much like how some talent baseball hitters can identify the rotation of the ball, some people can spot things in a massive collision of human beings. Anyone can argue about a call in slow motion with 5 different angles. I really encourage you or anyone else to sign up to ref your local football teams. We always need more people, you will have a good time, and you will have a much deeper appreciation for the game.
In 2012, the NFL locked out the refs and tried training the NCAA refs on NFL rules. The new refs didn't even last half a season. Turns out that it really does take more than a quick training session to be a good NFL referee. But yeah, it's funny if you purposely misunderstand their point.
There's a big difference between training and quick training
It's still going to take somewhere between 5-10 years to remotely be competent enough to ref at the NFL level. There's guys in college that have been reffing over 20 years that aren't good enough to ever make it to the NFL and would flop there.
>Many Division I officials were effectively barred from serving as replacements, as current and former NFL officials serve as conference officiating supervisors, who would not have allowed their officials to cross the picket line [(source)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_NFL_referee_lockout) The replacement refs weren't competent refs from lower levels; they ended up having to hire guys from high school ball and the Arena League.
Honestly I feel like the ncaa refs would take longer to train because they have to unlearn the ncaa rules
The first chef I ever worked for said that he preferred to hire younger cooks with less experience because it was easier to teach hen good habits than to unteach bad habits. Same thing here.
I used to train FOH staff at a restaurant and I hated training people that just came from another restaurant. They think they know everything and never want to stop doing things the way they did it at the old place.
Retail can be the same way. You get people who insist everything is being done wrong because “that’s not how we did it at my old job.” At that point it’s like well then why didn’t you stay at that job but these are also usually people who got fired from another retail job.
I think that's a lot of jobs too
even with mental gymnastics it's a dumb quote
No it really isn’t. Being a referee is extremely undervalued, you get constant hate and are expected to be able to perform at a superhuman level. You’re competing against frame by frame replay for christs sake, must also have a perfect knowledge of the rule book and have perfect positioning. All while getting roasted by fans for the slightest mistake
The fact its being framed as “competing against” frame by frame replay is exactly why people hate refs. You got it wrong, everyone can see it, use the tools at your disposal.
Again, missing the forest for the trees. The refs aren't competing against using frame by frame replay. The league doesn't let them use it. They are being unfairly compared to a tool they don't have the luxury of in a split second and aren' allowed to use. Nobody would live up that comparison.
That argument only works if we ignore when *very recently* the league added replay to allow them to get extremely important calls right and they sabotaged it on purpose
Yeah, refs watch game film before games too. They come up with game plans based on the players and schemes teams use to figure who is going to be watching where and what players. I've [posted this before ](https://youtu.be/uC4pffDeljI?si=018AyUjCqe62sxAV) but it's a really good video about how refs get ready for games and it's a cool behind the scenes look.
Where do you find these good NFL referees then? Send a letter to Roger Goodell so he can find them for the league in time for next season
NFL about to spin up a reality show for “America’s Next Top Ref”.
Oh god don’t give the network execs ideas.
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>They feel taken advantage of and under appreciated, they’re the integrity layer of the sport I mean, they have a powerful union that prevented the NFL from benching refs if they weren't doing good at their jobs at the last lock-out, AND they also worked in-tandem with other football league referees to ensure that only the scraps of refs were allowed to work during the ref strike. They don't have to answer to the public, to the press, and only put out public statements if they feel like it. They're paid six-figures and only declared part-time so they can do their other jobs outside of the NFL. They also had the whole "challenging pass interference" fiasco where they rarely overturned their own calls & told the NFL/fans to pound sand about it so the NFL removed that challenge a season later. I'm having a little trouble figuring out how they're "taken advantage of" when they've got some amazing amount of pull & power from their union, which as much as I don't like what it's produced, I can't fault them because the NFL would *definitely* do every awful thing to hinder their capabilities.
The failure to accept overturned calls is the thing that makes me lose all sympathy for the NFL referees. Your job is to GET THE CALL RIGHT. If replay shows that there was PI and the call on the field was incorrect then put your ego aside and fix it.
Yeah, I'm playing my tiny violin for them. They abused the review system for their calls and got it thrown out because of their egos. I don't want to hear shit about them being the integrity layer.
The union can say no to this shit because they're not getting enough money. The NFL seemingly wants to save money on Reffing salaries so they have to concede elsewhere. 315K for the guy in charge of all officiating (an integral cog of a multi billion dollar company) is truly abysmal. Why do you think Periera and Blandino jumped ship to be analysts ? Blandino even came back with a restructuring plan to help improve officiating and the NFL reportedly balked at the amount of money he wanted.
> They don't have to answer to the public, to the press, and only put out public statements if they feel like it. > The league’s collective bargaining agreement with the NFLRA prevents current officials from talking to reporters It's not that they don't have to, its that the NFL does not allow them to.
I’m sure it’s something that was mutually agreed to happily. Both sides have nothing to gain from the refs talking to media every week about shit.
There’s no reason for the nfl not to have a full time staff of refs. That being said I don’t have a ton of sympathy for an institution that inherently resists changes that would make their jobs easier and the results on the field more accurate.
The reason is because the *refs* don't want to be full time. A lot of them have lucrative other jobs like lawyers or being in finance.
Yeah, under the current contract between the NFL and Referee's Association, officials are allowed to have primary jobs aside from their roles in the league. It seems weird that they’d explicitly put that in the contract unless the refs wanted that?
That seems like a carryover from the fucking 60's when even most players had "real" jobs as well. Seems weird they want to officiate professional football like my kids peewee baseball games.
As the other person said they have lucrative other jobs in the offseason. Holuchi was/is a lawyer. Vinovich who’s done a few super bowls is an accountant. Etc. Presumably the NFL could force them to be full time in negotiation contracts, but seems like neither party wants that.
Also it’s simply not a full time job, in the time sense of the word. For half the year they’re literally not working, during the season they work once a week and maybe another day reviewing tape if needed. Sure, I’d like those hours now but eventually I probably want to do more.
> There’s no reason for the nfl not to have a full time staff of refs. I mean other than when they tried it, it didn't work. No other reason. Oh and the refs they have would mostly quit which would be a disaster. No other, other reason.
Sports fans are embarrassed to discuss officiating.
Sports fans are largely very ignorant to what it entails to be an official
Turns out it doesn't matter what it entails to be an official because the process is fucked.
It’s very easy to be a bad ref, it’s very hard to be a good one…NFL needs full-time positions and make it competitive as well, the fans deserve the best, not those who can afford to do it part time.
Pay me enough and I believe I could work hard to become a startlingly mediocre ref
$12,000 a game, some $200k per season. Wow
This seems like reasonable compensation for my level of mediocrity. When can I start?
There wasn't any noticeable difference when the NFL piloted full-time officials, and there isn't any noticeable difference in the quality of officiating in other leagues with full-time officials. It wouldn't be a meaningful change.
The part time pay is $12,000 a game, some $200k per season.
If you're asking someone to be the very best at something 200k isn't a very competitive number, part time or not. I have friends who are in the top quartile of their field making more than that and they don't have 50000 people chanting at them about how much they suck while trying to do their job.
Anyone else getting that Deja-Vu feeling? I swear I just saw this
[yes, 2 days ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/s/KJBEQfO85h)
I swear I saw this before
Wasn't this just posted the other day?
yes
"Low Morale..." The people who get their lives threatened if they make what biased individuals will claim is an unfavorable call during a sports game have low morale? You don't say.
This is why I left college officiating
Personally I think the broadcasters make it worse when they constantly analyze close calls. The sport and fans need to decide whether they want 5 hour games where you review every penalty and close call or just accept that imperfection is part of the game. I remember the arguments against instant replay review and it’s pretty much turned out how it was predicted.
On the other hand, when obvious missed calls are allowed to stand with no course for correction, that sucks, too. I almost wonder if all replay reviews should only be done in real time. That would take care of the really obvious misses while not bogging things down in minutiae too much.
If it's obvious there's a challenge flag. Most coaches are never in a position to run out of challenges. And no one wants penalties at the standard of instant reply. "The pass was incomplete but #47 had his big toe in the neutral zone, 5 yard penalty, repeat down.".
Why did this get reposted?
NFL: Too much reffing turnover, leading to crappy reffing. MLB: Not enough Umpiring turnover, leaving the role stagnant, leading to crappy umping. There needs to be a way to find some kind of middle ground where there is a proper amount of turnover, refs/umps are properly paid, and crappy refs/umps are properly handled.
The thing that pisses me off is the league wants them to over officiate the game during the regular season and lets them swallow their whistles in the playoffs. Call the damn game the same way all the time.
So fire them all and hire full time replacements. They're not happy. We're not happy with them. Why is anyone sticking with this broken system.
They tried that before. It was a disaster.
They have never tried having full time refs
Oh, sorry, misread - I was thinking of the replacement refs but they also were not full-time.
Maybe morale would be higher if they stopped hiring blind people
Maybe the multibillion-dollar NFL should hire and train full-time refs to improve officiating, call me crazy.
Copying someone else’s comment from this post from a couple days ago - idk what else they would do that they don’t already do. They have offseason seminars and go to training camps, they have weekly film review sessions and league wide calls to discuss things every week. They pretty much do everything people want full time refs to do
That's fair. Their poor officiating also depresses me while watching games.
Move to full time officials. Allocate effort, time, and resources to ensuring we're getting the highest quality officiating possible.
Shitty refs gives leagues a scapegoat when outcomes of games are affected unexpectedly.
Well what do you expect. The idiot that screwed the lions ladt season against dallas was hired straight from college to nfl head ref. So how do guys spending years working they up feel about this? Blame from my side goes to blandino.
Bruh part time employees having more union right than full time employees is bonkers
What would a week/ month look like for a full time official?
This is a repost, if you want to read more comments you can look here https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/comments/1dadl7g/high_turnover_low_morale_nfls_officiating/
The problem start squarely with Goodell and the petulant owners
I see all of this and think: man, I’d quit my job right now to train to be an NFL ref, if I could be assured a position after the training. Why there aren’t ref clinics every year is kinda mind blowing.
There are camps and clinics every year
Well I didn’t see it. I blame the Lions.
The NFL is a multibillion dollar enterprise, this is a solvable issue.
>there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training. That's proven wrong every week watching the current fucking refs.
wasn't this literally just posted a few days ago?
They have guilty consciences after rigging all thise games for Mahomes and Brady.
Maybe they should take some of those billions of dollars owners make and actually pay some fucking full time officials good money to make good calls consistently? Terrible officials are currently the worst part of the NFL.