Why Replacement Refs Would Cause Irreparable Damage to the NFL Brand

With the National Football League and its officials embroiled in a labor dispute that threatens to drag into the regular season, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell recently stated his public support for the replacement crews that have officiated games throughout the preseason.

Someone should send the commish in for testing. He may be in violation of his own substance abuse policy, because I'm pretty sure he's high.

According to the Associated Press via ESPN, Goodell stated earlier this week that "These officials have been trained. We've been working with them. We think they'll do a very credible job."

Um, what possible indication led Goodell to his conclusion?

The replacement officials fiasco started out with the crew for the Hall of Fame blowing the coin toss (a crew led by a referee, who as Mike Periera pointed out on the The McNeil and Spiegel Show via CBS Chicago, washed out of the Lingerie Football League last year), and from there it's gotten worse, to the point of potentially being dangerous.

As Pro Football Talk reports, replacement crews in two games during the second week of the preseason blew calls on helmet-to-helmet hits, including a non-call on one that resulted in yet another concussion for Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie.

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On Sunday night in Pittsburgh, the replacement officials didn’t even call the penalty after Colts receiver Austin Collie took a pair of blows to the head (one from Steelers cornerback Ike Taylor and one from Steelers linebacker Larry Foote) while obviously in the “defenseless” posture that prohibits hits to the helmet or with the helmet.

Besides, what about the safety of the players? If the officials don’t have the sense to, for example, take away possession of the ball after an interception sparked by an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit, the message is simple: Keep applying helmet-to-helmet hits. Yeah, you may get fined. But if you help your team win, it’s worth it. (The head coach will approve of that message, especially since he’s not the one paying the fine.)

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Once again it would appear that a National Football League that's supposed to be all about "player safety" is actually all about money, just as they were when recommending that the regular season be extended to 18 games.

Never mind the competitive damage that could be done to not just a game but to a team's entire season by an atrocious call. In a league where often three or four teams go into the last weekend in each conference fighting for a single playoff spot, an early-season loss borne of a blown call could easily be the difference between making the playoffs and sitting at home.

Maybe then team owners will start complaining.

The most maddening thing about this whole mess is that the gulf between the two sides isn't even all that wide. According to a separate Pro Football Talk report, the NFLRA released a statement earlier this month claiming that the financial gap between the sides is peanuts for a league with pockets as deep as the NFL's.

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“The difference in aggregate compensation requested by the NFLRA and offered by the NFL are insignificant compared to NFL revenues,” says the statement from the NFLRA.  “In the 2012 season the difference is about $2.2 million and over the five (5) year term proposed by the NFLRA about $16.5 million in total. That breaks down to $500,000 per team over five (5) years or $100,000 per team per year."

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In other words, a single team's owner could write a check that would cover it without batting an eye, and although that's not the only sticking point, anyone who believes it's not the biggest one is kidding themselves.

However, the two sides aren't even really talking, much less negotiating, and as things stand right now, it appears that we'll open the regular season with replacement crews.

The players, the fans and the quality of the product on the field be damned.

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