NFL officiating

[Craig S.]

I've always found the refereeing in the NFL to be the worst of any major sport. There's absolutely no consistency, especially in the areas of offensive holding and defensive pass interference.

Now, a recent league memo pretty much admits that referee Walt Coleman cost the Vikes a win over Green Bay on Sunday night:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/news/2002/1211/1475659.html

I don't expect any league's officials to be perfect. Baseball has the strike zone issue, certain NBA refs allow for more physical play, and the NHL officials are again swallowing their whistles in the third period and overtime. However, I'm amazed week after week at what is missed or miscalled in the NFL.

Walt Coleman, the man at the center this time, is no stranger to controversy:

http://www.provencehome.org/refsuck/walt_coleman.htm

Maybe they could rate the officials and reward/punish them based on performace, although I'm sure their contracts and union rights make that difficult. As an NFL fan, it's just gotten to a ridiculous point week after week, where you have to hope the officials don't cost your team a victory.

[sweaver]

NFL officials are, almost by definition, part-time employees. One day a week, sixteen workdays a year, plus exhibitions and playoffs. The NFL will have to pony up some serious money to get full-time, fully professional officials.

[Gosfgiants]

In order to avoid an appearance of impropriety the NFL does not employ full-time refs. Every other sport uses full-time officials. I think that if the league made the officials full-time employees they quality of officiating would improve.

[pwdennis]

NFL officiating is a disgrace. How a league with the big-time TV revenues of the NFL thinks it can get by with part time officials is beyond me. Only the WWE has worse officials

[pathogan]

who is no slouch, once said, and I heard him, to someone who was going onand on" yep, you're the kind of fellow who believes that NFL refs are on the up and up, too." Now they gave him a chance to retract and he said"WHY?"...

[Craig S.]

Now the NFL is admitting that they blew the final play of the Giants-49ers game, and that the Giants should have had another chance to try a field goal:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs02/s/2003/0106/1487933.html

I'm sure this is of great solace to the Giants at this point. :rolleyes:

[WiredTiger]

The officials did not do a very good job on that Giants call. It seemed like they didn't know what the rules were. I do think full-time refs would help. The NFL is making money hand over fist and they can't afford to pay refs full time during the season?

[pathogan]

did not blow a 24 point lead in 17 minutes. the giants did that all by themselves

[WiredTiger]

Originally posted by pathogan
did not blow a 24 point lead in 17 minutes. the giants did that all by themselves
Agreed. I have a feeling if they had got the snap down that the kick wasn't going through anyways. But they still probably deserved another chance to fail on their own.

[Skip]

Originally posted by Gosfgiants
In order to avoid an appearance of impropriety the NFL does not employ full-time refs. I don't understand this statement.

[KCBOOMER]

The other sports have full-time officials because for at least six months the officials work at least three times a week plus travel. The NFL offcials travel once and just for one game.

The NFL needs to figure out how to up the amount of training these guys receive, but convincing the owners that upping their officiating costs by a factor of 5 to 10 is going to be a tough sell.

[Gosfgiants]

With playoff games the NFL uses all-star crews. The refs in all games this weekend had most likely not worked together before. Add in the other problems of not being full-time officials and you get awful calls like what happened in the Giants-Niners game.

[SmedIndy]

I thought the NFL officiating was better this year than in the past. However, I think you need to keep crews together.

One of my friends here in Zionsville is a head linesman for high school and small college games - for the HS tournament they pick crews, not individual refs, for the assignments and he did a state final game in football this year.

Bad calls happen in every sport. They cost team games. It's possibly exacerbated in football because there are few games, but the refs don't beat you 999 times out of 1000.

You haven't seen bad officiating until you have seen the refs in the Central Hockey League...phew....

[JamesI]

The officiating can be horid, but not really any worse than the NBA or the MLB strikezone.

[Skip]

I have an acquaintance/ex-student who is also an ex-NFL part-time ref. His comments about the 'profession' are quite interesting. Positive in general, but open about the reality of the part-time-ness of the job and what that means in terms of approach to it.

[Max Power]

I'm sure that, if you set the starting salary around $60,000 a year, there would still be tons of qualified people just dying to become a FT ref.

And, as baseball has shown, "official" unions are no where near the threat of player unions.

[gyb13]

http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs02/s/2003/0107/1488896.html

Tagliabue announces officiating changes, effective immediately.
*On calls in dispute, all officials on the field will be part of a conference on the field. On Sunday, after the final play of the Giants-49ers game, only those officials directly involved in the play were part of the on-field conference.

*The NFL is changing what each official is looking for on field-goal attempts.

[pwdennis]

Originally posted by pwdennis
NFL officiating is a disgrace. How a league with the big-time TV revenues of the NFL thinks it can get by with part time officials is beyond me. Only the WWE has worse officials

The above is what I posted on 12/14/02 - nothing that has occurred since has changed my opinion. While I was rooting for the NY Giants to get wiped out, they did not deserve to lose in this manner

[TimmyB]

This, from Dr. Z at CNNSI:
Crossed signals -- Nothing special about NFL's 'all-star' crews (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/dr_z/news/2003/01/13/drz_insider/)

This explains a lot about playoff officiating.

[pwdennis]

It occurs to me that if the NFL does not want to go with fully professional officiating crews that they could at least have full time referees and head linesmen. THat might be enough to afford substantial improvement

[rcartman28]

Originally posted by TimmyB
This, from Dr. Z at CNNSI:
Crossed signals -- Nothing special about NFL's 'all-star' crews (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/dr_z/news/2003/01/13/drz_insider/)

This explains a lot about playoff officiating.

I saw that yesterday, too. Kind of sad that you can potentially have your 11th rated back judge doing such a critical game. They definitely should cut back on the number of post-season refs and just have them do more than one game to keep them sharp.

[pathogan]

...seems they don't like being scapegoated by the NFl
http://nytimes.com/2003/01/15/sports/football/15NFLL.html

[qtlaw]

I can see how the officials are more attractive as part-timers. They make pretty good money outside of the NFL, therefore, they are less likely to be influenced/swayed/ by "outside" factors, fixers, bettors.

Full-timers, at $60,000 per year, would be reasonably susceptible to these outside influences. Plus, what is a ref crew going to do for a full week? What about the remaining 32 weeks of the year?

The answer lies with keeping crews intact and having the best team/crew assigned to the best games.