Replacement Ref Madness – What’s All The Fuss About?

At the risk of further inciting an already frenzied crowd of NFL football fans, I ask this question: why all the fuss about these replacement NFL referees? After all, what did you expect?

At the end of last night’s Monday night football game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks, the game came down to a final “Hail Mary” pass from Seattle to the end zone. As has been the case with countless previous Hail Mary plays, the ball landed in the middle of a scene of crowds of opposing players, all fighting, pushing and shoving for a chance at the lucky ball. The (endless) replays clearly showed that offensive receiver, Seattle’s Golden Tate, pushed an opponent out of the way to gain access to the ball, while another Green Bay defender, MD Jennings, appeared to take primary possession of the ball over Tate. Both players hit the ground holding the ball. Arguably, Jennings appeared to have more control of the ball than Tate, but the referees ruled a “simultaneous catch” favoring wide receiver Tate, thus giving Seattle the winning touchdown. Oh, I should have used the proper nomenclature, replacement references, that is. The whole world went crazy.

This morning I woke up to a media foam that had been building up since last night. The “play” was all over the news, and ESPN’s commentators looked and sounded like the world had just been invaded by aliens, or at least “replacement” aliens. They were mouthing terms like “shocked”, “disgusted”, “baffled”, “ruining the integrity of the game”, and “every single one of us being insulted”. With that last statement, I finally found something I could agree with.

I hate to be the voice of reason on this issue. No, I really hate being the voice of reason on this, as the so-called refereeing debacle has for me exponentially increased the entertainment value of football (it’s still entertainment, isn’t it?). Even to my amateur eye, there’s no question that the quality of NFL umpiring has suffered since the full-time pros went on strike and the league brought in these replacements. And we are surprised, shocked, baffled by this result…because…why?

Earlier this month, 30,000 Chicago public school teachers went on strike. Do any of us in our right minds think that if the mayor of Chicago had quickly gone and rounded up 30,000 “replacement” teachers, the quality of education for those 350,000 children would not have suffered noticeably? Consequently, when the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike, didn’t we expect the quality of TV shows and movies to suffer at the hands of “replacement” writers? Okay, delete that example, because I’m pretty sure the Starship Troopers movie script was actually written by professional writers who weren’t on strike, believe it or not.

The point is this: How could we have expected these “replacement” umpires to come in and do nearly as good a job as the “real” umpires? Presumably, if they were that good and that well coached, they would have already been in the NFL to begin with (and thus also on strike). My opinion is that these poor guys have been asked to do something they have never done before, for which they were not fully trained and therefore relatively less qualified than their striking counterparts. Duh. Under those circumstances, are there any players out there who would have bet against this kind of setback in the quality of officiating? Of course, no.

I realize that the NFL is a mega entertainment industry, and that team records, professional careers and many dollars are at stake. But until the strike is over, we have to get over it and give these current referees a break.

My advice would be the same as I have always given when training our youth athletes. Referees are human beings. Everyone is going to make mistakes in our games. Some of them are better than others. But we have to assume that they are doing the best they can. And we have to hope that bad decisions apply equally to both teams. Other than that, don’t worry about them and don’t complain. Just go out and play.

As for me, I love the color these new black and white striped jerseys are adding to the game.