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Post by yorkieref on Sept 27, 2012 19:02:27 GMT
South Park's take on it... Like
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Post by teevee on Sept 27, 2012 20:06:02 GMT
And right now, after all the vilification I can't help feeling a little sorry for the replacements. They did their best in atrocious circumstances. Being div II/III officials they weren't as far as I am aware EVER going to be in the frame for promotion to the NFL. Presumably the NFL hired them for precisely that reason. In the future they'll want the best from Div I so they were never going to endanger any of them. I don't care what anyone says, I don't think the NFL were stupid enough not to see what would come about, but for whatever reason chose to follow a certain path. Where do the replacements go now? Will anyone EVER take them? Or have they basically been hung out to dry? Some of those guys looked pretty young too ...
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Post by New(ish) Ref on Sept 27, 2012 21:00:49 GMT
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Post by jedsy123 on Sept 28, 2012 14:24:38 GMT
And right now, after all the vilification I can't help feeling a little sorry for the replacements. They did their best in atrocious circumstances. Being div II/III officials they weren't as far as I am aware EVER going to be in the frame for promotion to the NFL. Presumably the NFL hired them for precisely that reason. In the future they'll want the best from Div I so they were never going to endanger any of them. I don't care what anyone says, I don't think the NFL were stupid enough not to see what would come about, but for whatever reason chose to follow a certain path. Where do the replacements go now? Will anyone EVER take them? Or have they basically been hung out to dry? Some of those guys looked pretty young too ... I have zero sympathy with them to be honest. They're the ones who chose to do it, the NFL didn't put a gun to their backs and say "officiate these games or else". If they were concerned about forever being known as a scab or whatever then they shouldn't have taken the jobs which would have forced the NFL to make a deal with the "real" refs sooner.
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Post by New(ish) Ref on Sept 28, 2012 17:01:16 GMT
And right now, after all the vilification I can't help feeling a little sorry for the replacements. They did their best in atrocious circumstances. Being div II/III officials they weren't as far as I am aware EVER going to be in the frame for promotion to the NFL. Presumably the NFL hired them for precisely that reason. In the future they'll want the best from Div I so they were never going to endanger any of them. I don't care what anyone says, I don't think the NFL were stupid enough not to see what would come about, but for whatever reason chose to follow a certain path. Where do the replacements go now? Will anyone EVER take them? Or have they basically been hung out to dry? Some of those guys looked pretty young too ... I have zero sympathy with them to be honest. They're the ones who chose to do it, the NFL didn't put a gun to their backs and say "officiate these games or else". If they were concerned about forever being known as a scab or whatever then they shouldn't have taken the jobs which would have forced the NFL to make a deal with the "real" refs sooner. Be careful judging these guys (and I say that as a life-long trade union member). We know what they've done, but we don't know their circumstances. There are large swathes of the US in a very poor economic situation. What the NFL offered these guys may have made the difference as to whether they could feed their families or not for the next 6 months. Principles are great, but if the decision is to compromise them in order to put food in your kids mouths, things become a lot more grey.
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Post by jedsy123 on Sept 28, 2012 17:26:56 GMT
I have zero sympathy with them to be honest. They're the ones who chose to do it, the NFL didn't put a gun to their backs and say "officiate these games or else". If they were concerned about forever being known as a scab or whatever then they shouldn't have taken the jobs which would have forced the NFL to make a deal with the "real" refs sooner. Be careful judging these guys (and I say that as a life-long trade union member). We know what they've done, but we don't know their circumstances. There are large swathes of the US in a very poor economic situation. What the NFL offered these guys may have made the difference as to whether they could feed their families or not for the next 6 months. Principles are great, but if the decision is to compromise them in order to put food in your kids mouths, things become a lot more grey. These aren't guys who are crossing a picket line to work in a coal mine or a factory though, are they? I don't think any official (us NCAA, NFL or whatever) gets into officiating because of the money, they all have full time jobs outside of officiating so I don't think it is a life or death situation. From some of the figures I've seen bounced around, they're not even earning THAT much more doing NFL games than they were doing stuff like Div II college, arena or whatever they were working previously.
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Post by New(ish) Ref on Sept 28, 2012 17:39:27 GMT
Be careful judging these guys (and I say that as a life-long trade union member). We know what they've done, but we don't know their circumstances. There are large swathes of the US in a very poor economic situation. What the NFL offered these guys may have made the difference as to whether they could feed their families or not for the next 6 months. Principles are great, but if the decision is to compromise them in order to put food in your kids mouths, things become a lot more grey. These aren't guys who are crossing a picket line to work in a coal mine or a factory though, are they? I don't think any official (us NCAA, NFL or whatever) gets into officiating because of the money, they all have full time jobs outside of officiating so I don't think it is a life or death situation. From some of the figures I've seen bounced around, they're not even earning THAT much more doing NFL games than they were doing stuff like Div II college, arena or whatever they were working previously. Do you know they are all in full time employment? Do you know what they have actually been paid? Do you know what difference those NFL game fees made to their personal circumstances? Without knowing all of that, while I don't agree, I also can't condemn.
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Post by The Ref That's Left on Sept 29, 2012 14:47:56 GMT
If someone came to you and said 'will you work in the NFL' would you have said no?
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Post by phclarke on Sept 29, 2012 17:22:46 GMT
I would say no, the commute would be a bitch
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Post by Ed Herk on Sept 29, 2012 18:16:41 GMT
Keith - if an official is being honest with himself, he should not accept an assignment which is beyond his capability to perform well. If these guys can't cut it in Div 1 college football (and I think that there are people in BAFRA who would) then how on earth could they seriously think that they would make it in the NFL? Now I'm not jumping on these guys, because they didn't screw up all the time, and they might have thought that they weren't going to be doing it long. However, a lot of them must be thinking "OK I worked NFL games but if I ever advertise it I'm going to get 'Oh, you were one of those replacement refs?' thrown back at me and I won't be respected." NO ONE won out of this whole debacle, except Messrs Hochuli, Carey, Anderson, Corrente, Steratore etc etc. The NFL screwed things up royally by thinking they could replace them with guys that couldn't make top flight college, so they lost face. The replacements were shown to be lacking on a GLOBAL scale, and not just within the football world (my new firm's senior partner knew about the Green Bay - Seattle blown call and he doesn't follow the sport at all), so those guys might have lost any respect they had in officiating. Some of the teams lost games that they probably shouldn't have done (Green Bay and New England for starters, possibly New Orleans when you consider that they had turnovers for TDs against Kansas City nullified by inadvertent whistles). One massive public relations disaster, frankly. I'm just very glad that we will have an experienced NFL crew at Wembley again this year - it was a massive honour being in their pre-game and on the field helping them out last year [PROUD MODE ON!]
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Post by teevee on Sept 30, 2012 13:00:30 GMT
You know Dan, I'm not sure that the NFL did screw things up royally, because I can't believe that they didn't know this is what would happen. I think they had an agenda but I'm damned if I know what it was. If you think about the effort they put into recruiting their officials, watching a guy for years to make sure he is consistently well above average to even merit consideration, then probably spending at least eight or nine months once a guy knows he is going into the NFL INTENSELY educating him re rules and mechanics, I cannot believe that they didn't know that the debacle that has happened was going to happen. As far as I know, wherever this has happened anywhere in US sports, the outcome has always been the same. These are clever guys, they've made millions of dollars, I think, with all of the evidence before them they MUST have known ... they were using guys who had even been 'cut' from levels even lower down the football pyramid if some of the stories are true. Most people foresaw it, I think they did. I think the full politics and agenda is something we will never know about.
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Post by Osric Pureheart on Sept 30, 2012 15:21:33 GMT
The owners have just successfully weaseled out of paying any new hires a proper pension that they absolutely could afford to pay. There's one rather obvious thing.
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