A Possible Ref Work Stoppage Is a BIG Problem

Albert is prepping, packing for the owners' meetings, and while it seems like, because I, I've learned my lesson here, well it seems like this is sort of a meh set of rules on the docket, like we don't have anything with the emotional, um, heft of like the push push or anything like that, um, I've learned my lesson because last year.

The league absolutely exploded due to a tweak that was made to special teams in the kickoff rule, and it completely changed everything about the game, right?

And so I think that, you know, I want to look through some of these, uh, and I have some of the stuff that we're considering in front of us, but Albert, you worked with the NFLRA, uh, the referees Association.

We published an op ed on SI.

com from them this morning.

This is Thursday, March 26th.

You can read it, uh, when this episode comes out.

There's a referee standoff and talks broke off yesterday when I think it was the RA believed that the NFL wasn't negotiating in good faith.

They basically sent some stuff suits down that to start talking to them.

Yeah, I, I, well, first of all, like, um, just so everybody knows, we are, again, like Connor said, we're running an op ed that the executive director of the NFLRA, Scott Green, um, wrote for us.

We did give the opportunity to the NFL.

Um, to write a competing op ed, which I think was the right thing to do.

Um, they declined to do that.

Um, but yeah, yesterday, um, my understanding is, and, you know, like that, there was a, this was supposed to be a two-day meeting.

Um, the meeting only lasted a couple of hours.

They didn't even make it to noon on the first day.

Um, the league walked out of the negotiations.

Um, and Uh, what the NFLRA's position is, um, they said that they basically gave him a counterproposal.

They rejected it.

They asked for a response.

And then Larry Ferrazani, who's been an executive for the league forever, said he doesn't have a, he didn't have the authority to Um, issue a response or counteroffer the counteroffer.

So then who does it kind of became, it kind of became, what are we all doing here then?

And I guess everybody then just headed back for the airport.

Um, I do think like the rules proposal, uh, you've read this, right, rules proposal number 5, for next week.

So number 5, this, um, rule, um.

Which was, it says it was submitted by the competition committee, but I'm thinking it was probably submitted by the owners themselves.

Um, it says for one year only to allow the NFL officiating department to correct clear and obvious misses by, made by on-field officials that impact the game.

In the event, That there is a work stoppage involving the game officials represented by the NFL referees Association.

OK, so here's what I wanted to talk about, and I'm glad you brought that up.

I think that once again this is a gigantic win-win for the NFL, right?

So let's say because they get a dry run, they get a dry run, exactly, um, and so let's say that.

Basically, Sky Judge, which this basically is, right?

I, I mean, under no uncertain terms of sky Judge.

Let's say that Sky Judge is, is really good, right?

And that it moves the game along, it's pretty flawless, and all of a sudden, like all the NFL referees who are just being puppeteered on the field below, like you don't really notice the stoppage, right?

It just kind of keeps, it, it, it, it keeps going and there aren't that many high-profile missed calls.

Then you don't have to pay the referee.

You know what I mean?

Like, goodbye NFL Referee Association.

It's essentially like the equivalent of like, hey, AI Claude's taking over this call center.

Goodbye, everybody whose job that was to do that, you know, um, I, and, and then the flip side of it, as my microphone flies into outer space, is that if this clunks up the game, and we all hate it.

And we're all pounding every, you know, uh, the table every single time one of these calls goes off cause it adds an extra 2 minutes of the game and we can't stand it.

Then the NFL has something to point to and say, see, everyone was bitching about this for, for 5 years.

This is what we're afraid of with Sky Judge, and then we tossed that out the window.

It's just, you know, yet again, I mean, beyond the, beyond that, it's, what are they really voting on here?

They're voting to give themselves leverage in a, in a labor negotiation, you know what I mean, because I, I think, I think the referees have.

Um, two unique points of leverage here.

One is, um, one is that they, that for most of these guys they're successful independent of, of the refereeing job, right?

So it's, you know, if you're, if you're locking the players out, you're basically taking their livelihood away.

That's not the case with these guys, you know, which is why they could withstand the lockout before because a lot of these guys are lawyers or doctors or do something else.

Um, that is well-paying and is what sustains them and their families, not the refereeing job.

So, um, for them to miss 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 paychecks.

It's not gonna hit them the same way it will a player whose livelihood is playing football, um, so that's one point of leverage.

And then the other point of leverage is, is the NFL having egg on its face and the NFL putting itself in another fail Mary situation from 2012.

Um, and there were so many examples of so much crap.

I, wasn't there a situation, I, I, I, I think I have this right where someone wound up with like having like 5 challenges instead of 5 timeouts instead of 3 or something like that.

There was something like that, I mean, it was just like, there was the most outrageous stuff .

And, um, you know what part of it is too, is like, they're not going, like this is the other piece that people don't realize.

So the NFL started reaching out over the last couple of weeks to Division 2 and 3 conferences that they have, um, college conferences that they have relationships with.

I think what people don't realize is they're not plucking refs, the replacement refs from like the Big 10 and the SEC.

They're going down a few levels because they can't pluck those guys, right?

So the reason it's so bad, it wasn't a mistake that it was that bad 14 years ago.

I, anybody who's seen an NFL game on the ground floor, on, on ground level, right, knows how, how fast it's moving and how hard it is to make heads of heads or tails of anything, you know, you have to train your eyes to watch that, right?

And so now you're getting a guy coming in there who was like refereeing like Williams Amherst last year, you know what I mean like.

No offense, because those guys are all gonna be our bosses, you know, but like, but, but, but you're getting, you're, you're, you're, you're bringing in somebody who was like, you know, who, who was officiating like an Ithaca game, and like, and now, it's like everything's on fast forward.

So like, you can't expect those officials to be able to, to see the game at that level.

It's just, it's nothing against them.

It's not like they aren't good at the jobs that they do.

But they're asked to do on like division 2 or 3, it's, I mean, it's more or less like, it'd be like taking a kid out of a high school calculus class and then dropping him on a trading floor.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's just not, it, it, they're, It's not the same thing, you know, so I'm just looking up the Division 3 football tournament because, and, and not, not to knock any of these schools, but it's just like when you're talking about the NFL, it just sounds funnier, um, you know, like I could just, you know, like, there's like NFL refs mic'd up and the one guy walks over to the other and he's like, God, this is so much more intense than Muhlenberg Wheaton, you know.

Last year I was at Wisconsin Whitewater.

Now in the Lambeau Field, LaGrange Farming Framingham State.

Uh, oh, Framingham State was on the tournament.

Birmingham State, Framingham, Framingham is one town over from where I grew up.

Framingham State was like the , all due respect, but Framingham State was a school where it was like it was synonymous with like, if you really effed up in high school, that was where you were gonna wind up.

Uh, apparently so too, uh, for, uh, NFL officials until they get, uh, accidentally promoted to the NFL, but I, um, I, this is one of those things that I think that.

While, uh, you know, not to kind of totally shoot down my own point here, but while fans are like, who cares, and while the NFL is maybe overconfident in Sky Judge, I do think that we will miss.

The good crews, and I think that that will be evident, you know, like the bad crews, there's bad officiating crews that are consistently bad, um.

And I don't think that we'll notice that much of a difference, but we'll notice the difference between a great crew and a, a, a, a mediocre crew, and I think that's probably where the referees are hoping that their power rests.

Like right now it's hard because it's like this is like telling a fan, like telling a fan that the referees are gone.

It's like telling someone it's like, oh, your senate, if you don't vote for your senator.

He's gonna leave and everyone's like, oh no, like, you know, or, or not, not senator's probably a bad example.

Like if you don't vote for your local comptroller, he's gonna leave and everyone's like, oh no, right?

Who cares?

And then, you know, if the, if the new comptroller comes in and is a complete horse's ass and all of a sudden you're like, why is all this stuff fucked up?

Like, like what a comptroller does.

That's actually, hold on, because I need to know.

What is a comptroller?

Um, I'm not going to use AI.

Um, I was thinking of like the IRS agent, but, oh yeah, this is a big deal.

It's a management level position responsible for supervising the quality of accounting and financial reporting of an organization, our producers, texting assistant.

I mean, I knew.

How do you not know what it sounds important, but I, I never knew what it was.

This is a perfect example where, yeah, a, a bad comptroller and all of a sudden you get a tax bill for like $94,000 for your house and you're like, what, what happened there?