The NFL has commenced the process of lining up replacement officials in advance of another lockout of game officials. The head of the officiating union finds the news as stunning as everyone else should.
“Frankly,” NFL Referees Association executive director Scott Green told Kevin Seifert of ESPN, “I’m surprised they would even consider it after 2012.”
The use of replacements during the 2012 lockout culminated in the Fail Mary game, a Week 3 Monday night debacle between the Packers and Seahawks that quickly resolved the impasse. As explained in Playmakers, some within the league expected things to go off the rails long before the final game of the third week of the regular season.
Via Seifert, Green specifically expressed a concern mentioned in our initial item about the league’s effort to identify potential replacement officials: The possibility that replacement officials bet legally on sports. Green also believes that player safety could be impacted by officials who have no experience with football featuring the biggest, strongest, and fastest players.
The latter concern was raised 14 years ago, during the last lockout. The former is new, because legalized sports betting beyond Nevada dates back to 2018, six years after the last lockout.
Regardless, one email sent to junior colleges in California an email obtained by PFT indicates that the NFL hopes to identify “approximately 150 officials,” with the goal of reducing the group to roughly 130 after a four-day clinic in May.
Hopefully it’s just posturing by the league. Replacement officials do nothing to advance the interests of the sport, and the stewards of the game should not be willing to toy with the integrity of the game in order to save a little money.
Read the full article here
