Roger Goodell, Dean Blandino Say NFL Wants to Move to Full-Time Referees

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Senior Vice President of Officiating Dean Blandino said the league will move toward hiring full-time officials in 2017.

"The answer is yes, we are going to do it," Goodell told MMQB's Peter King of hiring full-time officials.

"It's something we negotiated for with the officials association. We feel confident it is worth going forward and seeing what the impact is…. We believe this can add more consistency. You still are going to have 17 referees who are not in here every week, but if they are in here over some period of time, they will get more consistency and they will be able to understand what everybody is doing."

The league has kept referees as part-time employees, which has allowed them to have secondary jobs during the weekdays. Blandino said the league believes some referees may resign if the league treats them as full-time employees.

"It's certainly a concern," Blandino said on PFT Live.

"When you look at our sport, football is different from other sports. We typically play once a week, and as officiating has evolved, that's why football officials have had other professions, because of the longer gap between games. So that's a concern.

"We're looking at it from a phased-in approach, and giving our referees the opportunity to have two or three years to phase into this and maybe phase out of their other professions. The concern is there, it's real, you may lose some of your better people, but we think the benefits of full-time officiating outweigh those risks, and we're going to continue down that path."

PFT noted some referees, such as attorney Ed Hochuli, would make more money in their full-time jobs than they would as referees.