O.T. Clueless in Seattle

[RJ_Daley]

OK, so I'm a resident of Titletown, Green Bay, WI.  But, those that know me, know I am but a mildly interested fan of the Packers.  Yes, I follow them, I root for them, but I am not the typical rabid -can't live without them, nothing else in Green Bay is important, sort of fan.  

But, if you saw the game between the Seattle Seahawks and GB Packers this evening, and can not be completely exasperated and disgusted at the disaster that the NFL administration has perpetrated by its adoption of the sports world's equivalent of teahadist intransigence against labor compromise, and an arrogant willingness to sacrifice the entire industry, institution, and cherished American pass-time for dubious economic ideiology, well....

Sports fans of good will, the experts and lifetime workers in the professional football industry are sick.  Ironically, during a week when a titan of marketing and branding the credibility of the art and grace of this sport via the slow motion capture of the extraordinary skills of the players, passed away and surely must have rolled in his grave.  The slow motion raised to art by Sobell has now captured incompetence at its worse and shown light on a larger ideological fallacy as a metaphor for the destruction of this great institution or any other that stands with a common collaboration of requiring the assertion of labor bargaining with management as a measure of true worth to the greater good.

Roger Goodell, 'You didn't build that" but you and your ilk are sure going to destroy and dismantle that.

[John Kavanaugh]

Boo hoo, a lost game is a small price to pay when being held hostage by labor. I hope the owners stand strong.

[Mike McGuire]

NFL football has been a joke for a long time. Touch calls, penalties every other play, career ending injury around every corner......

Any time you need 6 guys with PHDs and 90 years of experience, 25 cameras with 3 semis full of replay equipment  to administer a game it's flawed.  

Rugby games seem to do fine with ONE referee, who the players call "Sir"

[Keith Doleshel]

I'm with you RJ.  The NFL is a billion dollar industry putting officials on the field who are worthy of low level college football at best.  I would hardly describe the NFL as being "held hostage by labor."  When you are talking about a business as big as the NFL, you are held hostage by nobody.

[Matthew Essig]

It feels good to have a call (while an awful one) go Seattle's way after the Super Bowl fiasco.........

There were some bad pass interference calls that led to both a Seahawks and Packers touchdown. The game will be remembered for the calls on the last play, but the entire game was affected by the refs.

 P.S. The NFL needs to stop being a money-hoarding, arrogant, cluster f*** and bring back the real refs!!!!!!

[John Kavanaugh]

What's next, give the utility workers who provide electricity more money before they turn off the lights?  Hell no, play Monday Night Football in the afternoon first. The refs are just as much at fault as the owners. At the very least it has been one very interesting third week.

[Matt_Cohn]

Makes you feel good about the game of golf, by comparison.

[John Kavanaugh]

Makes you feel good about the game of golf, by comparison.

Maybe some season ticket holders will not renew and join a club. I doubt many families can do both.

[RJ_Daley]

This is way beyond the issue of a mere game won or lost.  It is the willful 'creative destruction' as the corporate right wingers call it, in order to impose their compensation ideals of a race to the bottom of the barrel for all those that work and do, for the benefit of all those that merely own and clip coupons or play in a financial world of riskless investment when done at the highest levels and greatest sums at stake, in the same vane as 'too big to fail'.

The issue remains a silly corporate tenet of the 'creative destruction' premise, where "the League states that it desires to eliminate the defined contribution plan because other American businesses are moving away from such plans to a defined-contribution type plan.  However, 18 of the League’s member clubs continue to retain their defined-benefit plans for their employees." (taken from a news report of the lock-out issue)

I've seen this same corporate "putsch" perpetrated on our own State employees pension fund, and is another example of an assault by the top wealth echelons in corporate America on what they identify as the honey-pot ripe for raiding that they identify as the defined benefit Pension Fund arena.  In my opinion, the book by Ellen Schultz (a financial reporter for the Wall St Journal) titled "RETIREMENT HEIST" , is a seminal work that fully explains and defines this several decade systematic robbing of working people's pensions, with indisputable facts.

This is hardly about a silly football game and a few referees.  It is a much larger issue, and them chickens will come home to roost for the big business corporate elite that seek to play this repression game at working people's expense, merely because they wish to destroy those that identify as labor and their ability to assert their worth in the overall scheme of our economic and social society via collective bargaining.  There is no fiscal emergency to foist this right wing corporate takeover or remaking of a fully functional and effective defined benefit plan, other than it is what all the rest of the robber barron corporate executives have done and are doing to rob more and transfer the booty upwards to themselves.

Boo hoo to you too JK.  The owners will act in their own self interest after risking destroying everyone else's interests, and disrespecting labor, because they are greedy.  And, just as their franchises crumble from the fetid decay of their own failed greedy corporate dogma, they will find a way to make nice and salvage their billions of dollars of profit and their high seats in their extorted monuments to themselves that they get the people and their taxes to build.  It is all just a metaphor for all the other predatory and userer practices of a class of arrogantly wealthy gone nuts in America.  

[Kevin_Reilly]

Rugby games seem to do fine with ONE referee, who the players call "Sir"

You are overlooking the replay official and the two touch judges.  Quite a few tries at last year's World Cup were reviewed/confirmed by replay.

[Kevin_Reilly]

On topic, I watched the 4th quarter onward tonight, and it was an absolutely pathetic display by the officials.  Awful.  McCarthy's and Rodgers' reactions in the press room were remarkably restrained.  Hoodie wouldn't have taken it so well.

[Matthew Rose]

I'm a Packer fan and I'm physically ill right now. For real.

[Rich Goodale]

My wild ass guess is that there are just as many happy Seahawk fans as there are unhappy Cheeseheads.  As for the issues, it seems to me like th NFL is trying to move the officiating of its games from the 20th to the 21st century.  Full time professionals rather than part-timers.  Pension arrangments which require employees to tke some responsibility for their future.  Work rules which deal with the realities of the demanding schedule rather than assuming that it is a paid jolly for guys who have a full-time job elsewhere.

As to the increased randomness in decision making due to the use of scabs, this is to be expected, but the errors are not life threatening (as might be the case if the workplace were a coal mine or a battlefield) and the randomness will even out over time, in most cases.  As sports worldwide become more and more like businesses than fields of dreams, refereeing/umpiring needs to become more professional and businesslike too.

IMHO, of course....

[Sean Leary]

I was at the game and the officials seemed lost the entire game. I still think the officiating was worse overall in the Pats Ravens game but this call was unreal.

[Mike McGuire]

Rugby games seem to do fine with ONE referee, who the players call "Sir"

Quite a few tries at last year's World Cup were reviewed/confirmed by replay.

Hopefully the rule makers are wise and it stops there.

[John Kavanaugh]

Ron Whitten, the guy who once had a rater of his give Ballyneal a 0 tweeted this just this morning.  "Instant replay wasn't invented because of bad calls by replacement officials. Game won't change once real refs return."  After so many years of dealing with raters you have to respect Ron's knowledge of replacing one guy who doesn't know what he is doing with another.  Sausage is sausage.

[Chris Buie]

Ironically, during a week when a titan of marketing and branding the credibility of the art and grace of this sport via the slow motion capture of the extraordinary skills of the players, passed away and surely must have rolled in his grave.

I sure loved watching the films that guy made. They had the all time best announcer who intoned the extremely entertaining prose over this equally entertaining apocalyptic music. So great. I always got a kick out of this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5CTKlF45Ds

NFL Films actually made one golf film - the 1974 PGA. It's my favorite golf film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_UWDTaf8Q

[John_Conley]

On topic, I watched the 4th quarter onward tonight,

Kevin, can you be on topic when a thread is off topic?

[Pete_Pittock]

Since the NFL only understands ratings  fans should not watch any NFL games this weekend. Which should be easy for us with the Ryder Cup

[Craig Van Egmond]

Apparently some of the replacement refs are rejects from the lingerie league... pretty sad when you get mocked by the lingerie league commissioner..

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl---lingerie-football-league-commissioner-mocks-nfl-for-its-low-officiating-standards.html

[Kalen Braley]

The NFL will continue to remain highly watched.

If anything, as long as they keep the hack refs, they will move into the Howard Stern era....aka the era of fans tuning in just to see what kind of crazy thing is going to happen next so they can yell and scream about it.

While the ratings no doubt will remain high for the NFL owners...for now.... it will only damage the credibility of the game in the long run.

P.S. Instead of the NFL, it'll be the RNL - Rubber Neckers League for those tuning in just to see the carnage!

[Tim Leahy]

I like the replacement refs. It gives the NFL a "rub of the green" aura because you truly do not know how the call will go. Adds the luck element to the game.
The refs are turning down between 160 and 180 grand a year? For a part time job, c'mon.

[Kalen Braley]

The crazy thing about this....

According to various sources, The refs and the NFL are only about $3 million apart in what the refs want and the NFL on an annual basis.

$3 mill in a $10 billion/year industry?  Are you freaking kidding me??  $3 mill is walking around money for any of these 32 owners individually, and that's the AGGREGATE amount they are off by to get a deal done.

The owners are looking like massive asses on this one....

P.S.  This is not a true part time job.  These guys spend countless hours in the off season improving thier rules knowledge and attending various training clinics and otherwise. And that's not even mentioning the 15-20 years of officiating service they put in at the lower leagues to make it to the big leagues....

[Mike McGuire]

If the NFL is so well off why do they make Oakland play on dirt?

[Kalen Braley]

If the NFL is so well off why do they make Oakland play on dirt?

Lol...I'm guessing this is a joke....or Mike lives overseas.