Clearly the end of the Packers game should convince everyone that the real refs need to come back.
QFT. Nothing more to add, without getting far more worked up over this than I should.
Tonight’s game pretty much answers the OP’s question.
And it’s ironic that it’s a Seahawks fan. I wanted them to win, but not like that.
Fuck the people in charge for turning the NFL into Calvinball.
I’ll add something.
Scroll to 1:55 to see two referees standing 3 feet apart from each other, one signalling “interception” while the other simultaneously signals “touchdown.” The whole video is worth a watch, but that particular moment is priceless.
As I posted in the Week 3 thread, there were bad calls in the drive where the Packers took the lead (including 2 on third downs that extended the drive) so one could argue that the Seahawks shouldn’t have been behind at the end. And other than that there were plenty of bad calls. Enough to say that I don’t know who should have won the game.
Looks like this week’s MNF answered my question.
I do. You forget in your nostalgia the truly awful calls the other guys missed. The replacements suffer largely from inexperience, something that can only be accumulated by actually refereeing games. Dare you revisit the myriad number of threads from years past where the officials are hammered just as hard? What Denver fan can forget when Hochuli took a game away, the best ref blowing a crucial call when it mattered most? How about Super Bowl XL? As a Steelers fan, that’s a game you guys will never let me forget for all of its alleged officiating errors. Biggest game in the world and they blew it, right?
Not a week goes by when the regular refs aren’t burned in effigy. And those are guys that you want back because of their prowess? I am far more ambivalent than you are.
I have long felt that officiating is like sleet, wind or crowd noise: one more thing the players have to play through. The whole review thing is a mistake, zebra errors should just be part of the game, assuming personal bias can be factored out.
(And superbowl forty was not just two bad calls, that crew, which was supposed to be the best of the best, made numerous mistakes. To a Seahawk fan, that game looked a lot like the fix was in.)
I’ve got an idea; Take Albert Haynesworth’s contract and divide the cost up between all 32 teams. Give that money to the refs every year. Problem solved.
Could Obama pull a Reagan (air traffic controllers)? 
Another part of the issue is the arbitrary replay rules. For some reason or other, the refs are not allowed to use instant replay to determine possession in the end zone. So the replay from last night’s last play couldn’t have been used to overturn what was clear to everyone after watching it. In real time, the play wasn’t as obvious.
Actually, as a mostly former fan whose enthusiasm for football is at a pretty deep nadir, I’d pay to see that:
“Holding, offense, Number 73, who will now have to go stand in the corner of the end zone and dance the macarena during the next play.”
Yeah, but two refs made two different calls, so no matter what, one call was getting overturned for the other.
In addition to bad reffing, it seems to me that maybe some of these arbitrary rules need a review. I’m not saying change them all, but if I could at least get an answer as to why some of them exist…is it just that technology and the “tone” of the game advanced past what the rules expected?
Why can’t possession be determined in review? Why can’t a field goal that is over the uprights be reviewable if one between them is? Why can’t a coach challenge a penalty?
But it’s shameful that the outcome of some close games are being determined not by teak skill, but by shitty calls from the refs. I’m bitter because I’m a Patriots fan, and even ignoring the field goal (I’ll admit it could have been in or out, bad camera angle,) the Ravens still had two TDs on blown calls from the refs. On a 3rd down situation, Flacco threw an incomplete, but a ref called holding on a Pats defender. When the announcers looked at the replay, you could see that the defender’s hand barely brushed the jersey of the Ravens player. Nothing even close to holding. So Baltimore should have been forced to punt, but then went on to score a TD later in the drive.
And then the second TD from Torrey Smith was blatant OPI, and wasn’t called. Earlier in the game, they called Edelman for OPI, and what Smith did was twice as bad. Edelman had his arm out and was pushing a little, while Smith pushed off of the Pats defender while he jumped into the air. It wasn’t as bad as the missed OPI against Tate last night, but it was close. I just want some consistency.
So right there, that’s at least 7, potentially 14 points, the refs gave to Baltimore they shouldn’t have.
And there were BS calls in the Pats favor, too. There was a 5 yard penalty for illegal contact, when there wasn’t any, though there might have been holding, which would have been the same amount of yardage…but then the UC call against the coach after that was total BS.
I haven’t been watching football, but I’m fascinated by the referee situation.
Could the ‘real’ refs ask for even MORE money now? I think they should, if not for themselves then for the sheer entertainment value.
I’m happy to say that I didn’t see the end of last night’s game, because I turned it off with six minutes left in disgust over earlier calls. The final straw was a pass interference call against the Packers that was beyond ridiculous, and I’m a Bears fan so if I think a call against the Packers was bad it had to be pretty bad. The game was as exciting and meaningful as a coin flipping contest. Why watch the end?
I have no idea how much money the regular officials make, or what they are asking for. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. All I know is the league is putting out a shit product that I have no further interest in watching.
Personally, I don’t have any ill will toward the replacement refs. The speed of the game at the professional level is something that the players always say they have to adjust to, so how are whole teams of refs, most not even from Division I, going to adjust, especially with so many not being so sure about the rule differences and all. However, the later into the season we get, the more blame I’ll shift onto them.
That said, I’m still very frustrated with the situation because there’s been a lot of bad officiating, and that it happened in such a blatant and obvious way on a prime time game last night in a way that could have been fixed and wasn’t pretty much seals the deal. I felt like some of the inconsistency has cost my team, and I can sort of deal with that, but it’s just straight up making the game a lot less enjoyable to watch, not just because of the inconsistency, but also because some players are taking advantage of that fact.
Frankly, if the NFL doesn’t make a serious public effort to address the issue before next week, I simply won’t watch it until the problem is fixed. I don’t even expect it to be resolved, just some real tangible headway.
This is one of the weaker (but partially valid) apologies for the situation I’ve run across.
Substitute “player” for “referee” and see if the same argument seems reasonable. Sure, we can substitute say…Taylor McHargue (Rice’s QB) for Aaron Rodgers, right? It’s just a matter of inexperience and not skill, right? After a few years, it’s not going to make a difference on the level of play, right? It’s not like Aaron Rodgers never had an awful game or anything, so obviously they’re the same level of player!
That might be true for a few of the most talented college QBs (say some of the QBs at top 25 schools), but it’s not going to be true for the vast majority of college athletes.
NFL officials have already gone through a selection process. They’re generally chosen from the best FBS officiating crews (who themselves rose through lower level college and high school ranks). They had to be good even to get to that level. Maybe a few of these replacement refs might actually be ok with some more experience. But most aren’t. They’ve had their shot at getting promoted and were generally looked over. These aren’t officials from the major college conferences but from high school level or D3.
Or, as a Houston Chronicle columnist put it more eloquently, “Comparing NFL replacement refs to real refs is like yo-mama to Yo Yo Ma”.