From Lingerie to NFL play: Referee situation

After the “Monday Night Football” debacle which left Green Bay Packer fans along with many other players and coaches in disbelief and enraged, the NFL would surely bring back regular officials, right?

Regular officials for the NFL have been locked out of the league without pay and work since June. Locked-out referees met with NFL owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell and signed a deal bringing back referees before Thursday night’s game in Baltimore.

But does this mean that we will have better football sooner? We as fans hope so. On the field for Thursday’s game was a total of more than 70 years of NFL officiating experience.

All the bashing on replacement referees may have been a little bit strong, though. Of course we all think we could go out there and do a way better job and never miss a call. Fact of the matter is, these people are human, and were put in a situation that they have never dealt with.

The real bashing and anger should be thrown upon the NFL owners and commissioner for making us deal with the atrocious officiating. They were the ones who thought that the NFL would be OK with replacement officials.

It’s like going to Home Depot, getting some supplies to build a house, then instead of hiring professionals to build your house, you hire the guys at home depot that helped you find the stuff.

Sure they may know some ins-and-outs of building things, but can they build you a house? Probably not, unless you met Bob the Builder and some of his crew.

The replacement officials did the best job they could, and although they didn’t do a very good one, it’s not their fault.They were just completely unqualified for the job. It’s the faults of the commissioner and NFL owners for actually hiring those incompetent bozos.

Some of the jobs these officials had before they were scabs go from being real estate agents to high school teachers to policemen. A couple of the referees had not officiated anything higher than Division III football.

A group of replacement officials who were hired by the NFL, and are now out of a job, recently worked and were fired from the Lingerie Football League. Are you kidding me?

For people who don’t know, the Lingerie Football League is a bunch of women running around in bra, panties and pads playing football. And they couldn’t even do well enough to keep their job in that league.

By the way, sign me up for that gig please.

One of the officials who worked in the NFL as a replacement most recently worked as a youth referee in Fort Worth.

That’s like telling a high school football player to try and keep up with Michael Vick. That’s not happening.

One of the ref’s was also fired because pictures were found of him in a Saints jersey, and he was a big Saints fan. Just imagine him officiating a New Orleans game. Good for the Saints, bad for whomever they’re playing.

It seemed like anyone could pick up an application a month ago and go be a replacement referee.

I think we all say, “How do you miss that call ref? It’s right in front of you.”

Or, “How is that not a strike? It’s right down the middle.”

We all have the benefit of seeing what happens on high-definition televisions, then watch it played back in slow-mo, and then even slower-mo.

I’m guilty of doing all that, but like I mentioned before, the replacement refs aren’t near being professional referees.

The professionals are going to make mistakes. We know that no one is perfect.

The guys who haven’t even been in the league are going to make more mistakes, plain and simple, and that was proven so far this season only three weeks in.

The blame shouldn’t have been put on them, just like the blame shouldn’t be put on that guy you hire from Home Depot to do your house when your roof caves in three weeks later.

The blame is solely put on the people who locked out officials in the first place. The NFL was so oblivious thinking that the game wouldn’t be tarnished, and now we look back on the first three weeks of the NFL season and wonder what could have been.

Would there have been different outcomes? We know the Monday night game would have been different for sure.

It’s us, the fans, who keep the game going.

With no one watching, the players don’t get paid, jerseys don’t get bought and stadiums don’t get sold out. We need to be kept happy so we can do that.

The fans deserved better than that, and thank god the NFL finally realized it in time, before the season was really tarnished.

We should have realized that when we said expletive, expletive to Mr. Official through our TV sets. It wasn’t his fault he just got off the playground officiating the latest flag football game.

It was Roger Goodell and the owners faults for allowing him to wear the zebra colors that we know represent referees.

Thank god all of that is over though, and the regular officials are back. Now we have no excuse when our teams lose and think the game was changed on a bad call.

The game is going to be decided on the field through play and not with yellow flags anymore, and that is one thing I’m happy about.

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