Replacement Referees Could Ruin the 2012 NFL Regular Season

Referees have the most important—and hardest—job in the NFL. They make sure every aspect of the game is fair and safe, from breaking up brawls on the field all the way down to providing clean, dry, untampered with game balls.

They spot down and distance, keep the time, watch over dozens of people on the sideline running on and off the field every few seconds and yes, they call penalties.

Without great officials, the game can't be fair. The rules can't be enforced correctly or consistently. The players can't be kept safe. The games would be ruined; unwatchable.

The NFL's replacement refs are not great.

Commissioner Roger Goodell told Lions fans that officials get "99 percent" of all calls right.

That sounds impossible—officials only call between 10 and 20 penalties a game—but there are dozens of little judgments made during every play: where to spot the ball (vertically and horizontally), when to re-start the clock, whether there are no more than 22 players on the field, if they're all lined up legally, if there are any illegal motions before, at, or after the snap, if there's holding going on between any offensive and defensive linemen, tight ends and linebackers, receivers and cornerbacks, if there's any excessive contact after five yards, if there are any ineligible receivers downfield...

All of these dozens of ultra-high-speed decisions give little—or big—advantages to one team or the other. On each play, there are countless little ways that a call, or no-call, can shape the outcome. There are only about 120 plays in an NFL game, and each one counts.

As the replacement refs have shown, all these little things are extremely hard to keep track of, especially when you're not used to the speed and scope of the NFL. They proved it when the Miami Dolphins faced the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, when two balls made it onto the field at the same time:

The 120 members of the NFL Referees Association are the best in the business. They're proven, experienced professionals who are evaluated on every single call of every single game, year after year.

Todd Skaggs of ProFootballReferee.com interviewed NFL official Allen Baynes about the process. After receiving overnighted DVDs of their game, including all available angles, they get their preliminary assessment.

"Tuesday night we will get our grade report from our supervisor," said Baynes, "and normally they email out a preliminary report of what we did good and a couple plays that might not have been so good. They will make comments on those and obviously, those will be downgrades if they viewed something as wrong."

But the process doesn't stop there. After assessing incorrect calls and no-calls and determining their mistake rate, Baynes says officials go back to their film and re-watch themselves, and report back to their crew's referee if they disagree with the downgrades or have any questions about it. The league then works with the officials to review their decisions. On Wednesday, they get a final report.

Skaggs, a college official trying to reach the NFL, concludes:

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"You obviously must be at the top of your game to get the opportunity, but more importantly…to remain at that level. The NFL has very detailed systems to monitor and evaluate their officials and I would like to note that these systems are designed to improve the level of officiating. Every NFL official I’ve spoken with has remarked on the support they receive from the league which helps them become better officials."

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But none of those officials are calling games now.

Or the next-best crop of officials, who are attached to major Division I NCAA crews. Or the next-best, or the next-best after that. The replacement refs are comprised of officials who've worked at much lower levels, like Division III—or famously, in the case of Hall of Fame game referee Craig Ochoa, got released midseason from the Lingerie Football League.

Here's an example of what bad officiating can do to the outcome of a game. The Carolina Panthers are on the Houston Texans' 24-yard line, and quarterback Derek Anderson lofts up a pass to Seyi Ajirotutu. The ball is underthrown, and Arijotutu puts two hands to the back of Texans cornerback Alan Ball as he tries to brake and come back to the ball.

The official, standing in perfect position at the pylon, watches Ajirotutu push slightly off of Ball and calls...defensive pass interference?

The Texans had a 13-6 lead with less than two minutes to go before halftime. This horrible call handed the Panthers the ball on the 1-yard line, and Tauren Poole punched it in on the next play. The two teams went into halftime tied, and as the announcing team said, you can "thank the officiating crew for that."

The difficult part is, the NFL and its officials were already under fire. The way-too-complex NFL rule book was being interpreted inconsistently and unfairly. Last season, I wrote a "How-to guide to fixing NFL officiating," explaining that putting the burden of keeping NFL players safe from each other by making a host of tackling techniques illegal was not only not keeping the players safe, it was undermining the credibility of the game.

Eventually, even Commissioner Goodell agreed. During the playoffs, he said that consistency was going to be a major focus of the officials this year. "Consistency is exactly what every club wants, and I think every fan wants. You want consistency in the way rules are applied," Goodell said.

It is unclear how locking out the best available officials and replacing them with fifth-tier scabs accomplishes this.

With the scab refs in place, those problems become an order of magnitude worse. If replacement refs work regular season games, fans will quickly become livid with officials taking the game away from them, wildly swinging the outcomes of games with bad calls and bad no-calls.

Worse, players will be endangered (or outcomes will be swung) as enforcement of helmet-to-helmet rules get botched, as they were when safety Taylor Mays was flagged for a clearly clean hit.

If the NFL doesn't end its counterproductive, thrifty lockout of its part-time referees, the 2012 regular season will be ruined.