And you thought it couldn’t get any worse.
It’s been exactly six years and 25 days since Roger Goodell took over the office of Commissioner of the National Football League. Since stepping in for Paul Tagliabue, Goodell has gone out of his way to make his own imprint on the league. Fortunately for him, he’s had several opportunities to do this: Spygate, Bountygate, the Lockout of 2011, prioritizing player safety and the crack down of player misconduct off the field have all become benchmarks for “The Goodell Reign”. Whether or not Goodell has handled these issues properly up to this point is debatable. But this? This right here?!?! This debacle has TRUMPED THEM ALL!
Last night’s Monday Night Football contest between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks, aka The PutDaTeamOnMyBack Bowl, came down to one final play. With his team down five, Russell Wilson heaved a hail mary pass into a sea of white shirts. His receiver Golden Tate, SHOVED Sam Shields to the ground and seemed to get a hand or two (Or just a hand and a half? I still don’t know) on the ball, as did Packers defensive back M.D. Jennings. Of course, one replacement referee signals touchdown, while the other waived his arms indicating a touchback, or an interception in the end zone.
Confession: In real time, I thought it was a legitimate tie for the ball between Tate and Jennings (Even Mike Tirico described it as “simultaneous”). And as we know, a tie always goes to the receiver.
Sidebar: According to ESPN, Rule Eight, Section One, Article Three of the official NFL rule book states:
If a pass is caught simultaneously by two eligible opponents, and both players retain it, the ball belongs to the passers. It is not a simultaneous catch if a player gains control first and an opponent subsequently gains joint control.
Upon further inspection however, it does appear that Jennings has possession of the ball before Tate does and one could even question how much possession Tate had at all. Like all scoring plays, the touchdown was reviewed, although Tirico and Jon Gruden question on air whether or not the zebras are even allowed to review a “Touchception” such as this. The ruling was upheld, and chaos and hilarity ensued.
Lisa Salters: Did you push off? Golden Tate: I don’t know what you talkin’ bout. I don’t know what you talkin’ bout. (Classic)
As expected, the Packers were pissed off to the absolute highest levels of pisstivity. Head Coach Mike McCarthy was none too pleased with the outcome, Aaron Rodgers said simply, “It was awful”, and offensive lineman T.J. Lang couldn’t wait to share his feelings on twitter. Greg Jennings also took to twitter saying, “#NFL C’MON MAN! Can’t even be upset anymore. All I can do is laugh. Laugh at the #NFL for allowing America’s game to come this. WOW!”
But it gets much deeper.
Other players from around the NFL began TEEING OFF on the outcome, the replacement refs and the league via twitter, including Roddy White who said, “If I was the old refs I would holdout for more money after this lol” and Reggie Bush who tweeted, “Refs single handedly blew this one…”. We’re not talking about a random long snapper or a practice squad player here. These are some of the NFL’s STAR players openly ripping the league and its product to the public! Even mild-mannered Drew Brees has sounded off on the scab refs prior to last night’s game (Goodell should be feeling embarrassment of Romney-an proportions right about now).
To make matters worse, athletes from sports outside of football began mocking the NFL, including many basketball players like Dirk Nowitzki, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, among others (This is ironic because if there was any league who’s refs appear to consistently be comprised of three Mr. Magoo’s, it would be the NBA). And if that weren’t enough, rappers such as Bun B, Scarface, Wale and Lil Wayne all voiced their opinions on the porous officiating. Seriously, you got Wayne ripping on you, Goodell? You must really be screwing up because you can tell by his raps that dude really doesn’t care about anything anymore.
On the ESPN postgame show, Steve Young went from nearly bursting into tears, to demanding that not only does the league bring back the old refs, but they clone some kind of cyborg SUPER refs that are stronger, faster and capable of covering more ground. However, the criticism has been loud and clear even before last night’s game. We’ve seen the replacement refs lose total control of games, grant teams extra timeouts, grant a team challenges when they had no timeouts left, royally screw up spot after penalties and have seemingly murdered the pass interference rule in cold blood (The one called against Green Bay to set up the final play was particularly egregious).
C’mon now. Were y’all really about let this dude work a Saints game?
Looking at the Sunday night game between the Patriots and Ravens, BOTH TEAMS felt they got jobbed. So much so that the Ravens fans gave one of the loudest and clearest chants you’ve ever heard and Bill Belichick looked like Scar the way he chased down one zebra after the game.
It’s to the point that this stalemate is blatantly destroying the league’s product and reputation. Is Goodell willing to let the league’s rep and his own crumble to pieces on his watch over a few dollars? And sure, $50 million may sound like a lot of money to some, but considering the NFL rakes in roughly $10B (that’s TEN BILLION DOLLARS) annually, and even the least valued franchise of the 32 (the Jacksonville Jaguars) is worth about $770 million, I feel like the league can swing it.
Looking at the referee disaster through a different lens, it’s difficult to understand how Roger Goodell has actually let things get to this point. While Goodell earned a degree from Washington & Jefferson College in economics, he also got his start working in the NFL’s PR department back in the mid 80’s. It’s easy to see that Goodell has clung to his economic roots, but to stray so far from the public relations foundation he was given is surprising to say the least.
Back on September 6, Goodell said following the Giants/Cowboys opening night game, “I think our officials did a more than adequate job last night and I think that we’ve proven that we can train them and get them up to NFL standards.” He went on to say about the negotiations, “I think we were dealing from a position of strength from the get-go. We did this 11 years ago. The game does not stop.”
Well, that much is clear, Uncle Roger. The game does not stop. No matter how garbage your product appears to be (a product that you’ve previously gone to astronomical levels to protect) or how much player safety is at risk, “the game does not stop”.
Can you actually believe no flag was thrown on this hit?
Even an NFL replacement referee can see that the NFL has not held up their end of the bargain. If Goodell considers these officials to be “trained up to NFL standards”, then he MUST be removed from his post as commissioner immediately. It’s amazing that Goodell has such little of a pulse on his business, which he has ran (either as commissioner or as COO) for nearly 11 years.
Most reasonable people (despite all the punchlines) understand that these referees; a crew largely compiled from small-time college football, the high school ranks and the Lingerie Football League (not a typo); are in an extremely tough spot and are not to blame for this cluster—-.
Was it a bad call? Probably. But we’ve debated horrible calls from the officials on Monday mornings for years. The worst part is not that the refs blew the call, it’s the fact that two different signals were given. For whatever reason, the crew came together and awarded Seattle a touchdown on the field, which meant indisputable evidence would be needed to overturn it.
So why exactly wasn’t the call overturned?
Many criticized the refs for blowing the initial call, reviewing it and still getting it wrong. But imagine the response had they overturned it; perhaps the referees stuck to their guns as a sign of solidarity. These referees certainty look scared to death on every call of every game. Can you imagine the scene in Seattle had they taken that W away from the Seahawks? It would probably look a lot like this. What would people have said had the call been overturned? Would fans and media be applauding the refs for “getting the call right”? No! Of course not. The league and the officials would be railroaded regardless, which is why they attempted to save face the best way they knew how in the heat of the the moment and they could cover for themselves under the guise of it being a “simultaneous” catch.
Sidebar: Maybe there’s a gambling conspiracy we don’t know about? The Seahawks were three point underdogs at home and covered on the game’s final play. Wanna know how much dough exchanged hands because of that? Well, stranger things have happened before, right?
The bottom line is, if Roger Goodell and the owners care anything at all about “protecting the shield”, the product they put on the field and their millions of fans worldwide, they’ll get the original referees back into the fold as soon as possible. Make no mistake, Goodell works for the owners, so he’s in a tough spot as well. But at what point does the unadulterated GREED of the owners become unbearable?
It all makes sense now: Why “protect the shield” when a shield is designed to protect? The NFL has apparently reached teflon status.
Think of the hard earned money fans shell out every Sunday (including two preseason games at full price) to support their favorite team. Think of the time invested by football fans everywhere (hell, I’m getting angry just writing this article because I’m not even writing about the game itself!). When you invest that much into anything, you expect a certain level of courtesy and professionalism.
Do you think the owners would stand for replacement contractors in charge of building that fifth story on their houses? What about replacement surgeons operating on their loved ones?
So why hasn’t this problem fixed itself yet? There is one major hurdle that’s preventing the regular refs from coming back to work. Sure, the league has tried extremely hard to “protect the shield’ and yes, the product is eroding right before our eyes, to the point that people are now comparing the league to the XFL. But fans everywhere simply cannot get enough NFL action, and thus, the owners still hold the Big Joker.
As we stated on twitter two nights ago, the referee situation is likely to remain unchanged unless the normal refs cave or we stop consuming the NFL. We all know the latter will not happen, which means ultimately, WE ALL LOSE.
The players lose because their jobs and personal health and well-being are on the line. Coaches lose because when a team fails to win, they are the first to go (the front office isn’t far behind). Fans lose because they must sit back while an inferior product is jammed down their throats and their favorite teams can lose for no good reason as we saw last night. The original refs lose because they never got paid and the new refs lose because they’ve reached Kardashian-like levels of hatred and ridicule. The media loses because sports writers are not slaves to insane hours while working on deadline, only to make $25,000 a year to report on officiating.
Tyler Perry could not script a more ridiculous ending to last night’s game given the circumstances surrounding it. Though many players and coaches have unjustly scapegoated the replacement referees this season, there is no escaping the fact that this group is not equipped to properly officiate NFL games. While there have been talks between the two sides, little progress has been made with the regular refs, and the league continues to back the replacements.
Only when their hand is forced will the owners acquiesce to the regular referee’s demands. It’s too bad they hold all the cards.