Another week full of officials making errors has football fans and players up in arms. If you have managed to piss off Patrick Mahomes, you must be doing something wrong. The thing is, solving this issue shouldn’t be difficult.
Really, this is something that should have been handled years ago. But hey, we’ll never know the hardships of being born a billionaire and having daddy gift you a professional football franchise. The struggle is real. Anyway, fixing the NFL refereeing problem would be easy if the league wasn’t so damn cheap.
Before we talk about the solution, it’s essential to address reality. NFL officiating will never be perfect. It’s not possible. And honestly, if it was perfect, the sport would be less fun as a whole. However, NFL officials should be put in a position to do their best through both training and making sure rules are as easy to enforce as possible.
NFL owners and Roger Goodell do not seem to agree. In fact, they are happy to trot out underprepared officials so long as it helps their bottom line. Billionaires in sports being cheapskates, what a surprise.
Here’s the deal, the NFL could take two steps to start correcting the issue of officiating. The first is an idea that has been floated for as long as anyone can remember. Make referees full-time employees. Now, why this is not the case is a source of debate.
The league would probably hire them on a full-time basis, assuming the refs are paid as little as possible. On the flip side, officials have no desire to give up their lucrative professional careers to make less money annually as a ref. The end result is gig workers turning up on Sundays and doing this.
There is an agreement to be made between the two sides should they come together and want it to happen. This is probably the easiest of the two steps to make a reality.
With referees being full-time employees, attention turns to what they will do during the offseason. Obviously, you can have them be a part of OTAs and offseason programs. But we also know the most important thing in football is reps.
Every player, coach and front office staff talks about the importance of reps. This is how you get better. Right now, there aren’t many opportunities for refs to get reps. You have three preseason games, which are usually disjointed affairs, and a handful of training camp visits. These are something. But a lot more is needed.
This is why the NFL needs to be invested in a spring football league. It isn’t about making money or building new fans. It is all about the reps. Reps for referees, reps for coaches and reps for quarterbacks and offensive linemen. In other words, improving the areas that most affect on-field play.
Of course, the league has done this in the past. It operated the NFL Europe and even had an agreement in place to acquire 49 percent of the Arena Football League back in 1999. They backed out of the latter and killed the former due to mounting losses.
In the 2000s, it was estimated that NFL Europe lost upwards of US$30 million. Not ideal. However, you could also look at the cost differently through a modern lens.
Let’s say hypothetically, the NFL gets back in the spring/summer football game. Probably not in Europe. Maybe they opt to go it alone. Perhaps the league invests in whatever the hell the new XFL/USFL league will be.
Whatever the case may be, let’s say the NFL loses US$30 million annually on this endeavor as a worst-case scenario. That is less than US$1 million per team, a small percentage of the annual operating budget for a franchise.
Importantly, this isn’t a financial loss. It’s an investment. An investment in eliminating the NFL refereeing problem. It is all about getting those full-time employees reps as opposed to having them sit in a law office filing briefs and shooting the breeze by the water cooler during the offseason. This won’t solve all officiating problems, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
Additionally, it would help prevent bullshit like this from happening. Give those backup quarterbacks some more experience. Give those depth linemen some more experience. Not every second and third stringer is going to be Kurt Warner or even Tommy Maddox. But at least they wouldn’t come into the game with the deer in the headlights look.
The NBA Summer League is a foundational piece for basketball. It’s where players, coaches and referees get a chance to hone their craft and understand what it takes to be a professional. Sure, it may not be a financial success and maybe its impact is fractional. But even improving things by one or two percent can make a huge difference when the games do matter.
If that US$30 million the NFL annually invests in a spring league and making refs full-time goes to eliminating a handful of bad calls and some sloppy as hell backup quarterback play, then it’s worth it. Teams spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fireworks each season. Fixing the NFL refereeing problem should be a no-brainer. Then again, this is the NFL we’re talking about.
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