The NFL season is being completely fucked up over .02% of league revenues. Yes, it is:
Why a $9 billion dollar a year business would lock out the men in charge of providing law and order and replace them with mall cops is difficult to fathom unless you understand the most basic tenet of the men who now run the game you love. Their belief is simple: everything, and I mean everything, is about the money.
It’s why they are at present locking out their referees over a dispute that boils down to an average of $62,500 per team per season over the next seven years. Actually a little less because the number being argued over is a difference of about $10 million to $12 million over seven years so it’s actually less than $2 million a year but let’s make the math easy. To save roughly $62,500 a year per billionaire owner, the NFL will likely enter the season using glorified Pop Warner officials (at least one of whom was allegedly fired by the Lingerie Football League, according to former head of NFL officials Mike Pereira).
This is amazing (via commenter Todd):
A reader in attendance for a seventh-grade football matchup between Bethany Middle School and Casady in Bethany, Oklahoma reports the referee for tonight’s middle school game is none other than Kevin Akin, who served Sunday as head linesman for the Browns-Eagles game and will be working the Broncos-Falcons Monday night game this coming week. That’s him above patrolling the backfield, according to our source. Perhaps he took the job because he wanted to see some competent football as opposed to the disaster he officiated on Sunday, who knows?
I know, NO ONE PAYS TO WATCH REFEREES OFFICIATE. No one pays to watch Roger Goodell to do whatever he does either, and he makes $20 million a year.
Little Boots
the NF what now?
handy
Neo Fascist League.
? Martin
Stop being mean to the job creators Doug!
poco
And then they complain about teachers making $76,000 a year. These are your priorities, look at ’em and weep.
Little Boots
see, doug, it’s not just me.
you post punk broder.
danah gaz
@poco: +1000timesinfinity
shoutingattherain
Yeah I’m gonna get outraged over something that happens in the NFL.
Spaghetti Lee
Don’t worry, the NFL’s just putting them in timeout. I hear Seattle has a few timeouts to spare anyway.
gbear
As if I needed another reason to never watch football.
JPL
Seattle deserved that extra time out ..cuz freedom isn’t
free.
can I have a job on fox now?
Yutsano
@? Martin: Are referees out thayr creatin’ jerbs and eatin’ what they kill? I DON’T THINK SO!
butler
I want this situation resolved and I think its a great symbol of the labor vs. management relationship in America, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say the season is being “completely fucked up”. The replacements did a decent job this weekend overall, especially after a rough preseason.
Honestly I don’t think most fans would notice the difference if they weren’t told.
handy
@Yutsano:
It’s good to be the Job Creators.
Spaghetti Lee
I THINK FOOTBALL SUCKS AND I’M POSTING IN THIS THREAD JUST TO LET EVERYONE KNOW I THINK THAT.
burnspbesq
Everybody needs to make as much off the NFL as they can while they can, because in 15 years there will be no more football. The rapidly developing data regarding brain trauma will see to that. Even football players know it: you think it’s by random chance that Jake Seau, Junior’s son, plays lacrosse?
In all seriousness, any parent who lets his or her son play football is in need of a visit from CPS.
MattR
Idiots. In that first article some NFL bigwig is quoted as saying “You’ve never paid for an NFL ticket to watch somebody officiate a game.”. That may be true but that doesn’t mean that people won’t stop paying for tickets if they think the officials will determine the outcome. It is almost like they don’t like being the top sports league in the US and want to help the other leagues catch up.
@burnspbesq: And that actually is a decent explanation. If you know you are gonna be out of business in 15 years anyway, you might as well squeeze out every penny while you can.
dr. bloor
Tell you what, though. I’d pay to see one of the Harbaugh boys spontaneously combust, which is a near-certainty if they go through the season with the mall cops.
handy
@MattR:
You’ve never paid to watch the goal posts or the field chalk either but I’m just gonna go out on a limb and say the game you pay to watch is much more enjoyable with their presence.
Linnaeus
It’s about power. That’s all.
Brian R.
@MattR:
No, I pay to watch the players. And I can’t do that if Mr. Magoo is fucking up the flow of the game with shitty calls.
Pay the goddamn refs. With nothing to do but pump iron, Ed Hochuli has got to be ripped beyond belief now.
MattR
Go read Ted Bartlett’s article from a month ago over at a wonderful Broncos’s blog. I feel bad blockquoting this much but it is good stuff. So click the link, read the whole piece and relieve my guilt.
Little Boots
where is doug?
dr. bloor
@burnspbesq: This is a nice sentiment, but totally detached from reality. Rule One: Billion dollar businesses don’t disappear because the widgets get damaged during the course of normal operations. Rule Two: There will always be widgets.
dead existentialist
Hey, it was an Oklahoma junior high game, right? That’s only a step down from college to hear it from the Okies. Soonergrunt, can we get a “Boomer Sooner” here?
Todd
@MattR:
Hey, that’s my line about the bunch of bullshit that flies out of the owners’ suites every time there is a player’s strike. They talk about greedy players who get millions for playing a game, and I tell everybody that nobody pays to watch an owner own or a management parasite shuffle papers.
It’s the 1% versus the rest of us in a nutshell – “Galtian Superheroes” my ass.
replicnt6
Oh, come on, now. We need less regulation in the NFL. The refs just spend too much time enforcing outdated regulations. Let the market decide if anyone should face a penalty for ripping off the quarterback’s head after he was down.
Little Boots
what we need is doug to show up in his damn thread once in a while. that’s what we need.
dammit, janet.
mechwarrior oline
@burnspbesq:
Oh hogwash and horseshit. The NFL will be around, it may change though.
First off people love the carnage and the danger, that’s part of the fun. Like NASCAR, if it couldn’t ruin your life utterly why are we paying them millions? Fuck that, if it’s not life threatening or crippling lets dial down that pay check. People watch these sports for the bloodshed. And nobody likes namby pamby sports, those are for suckers and wimps who got beat up all their life. I’m half joking here, but the carnage is what SELLS. Big burly alpha males beating the snot out of each others, it’s the entire damn point of the game.
Second, there are tons of dangerous sports, just about all of them are. Soccer will give you brain damage, runners blow out their knees, outside of a rare few sports involve impact and impact is bad. The problem with football is the protective gear. It’s like boxing in this way. You know why boxers wear gloves? Because if you actually hit someone in the head with your fist you’d break your fist and your wrist way before you knocked them out most of the time. The gloves simply enable larger guys to punch each other in the skull without destroying their hands. Hence why mixed martial arts doesn’t carry the same risk of brain damage, no real gloves.
Football is in the same situation. All that protective gear simply serves to make a higher impact game. If you actually played like that without it, both guys would be in the hospital real quick and entire teams would be laid out. Strip out the protective gear and the tackles and damage will go away.
Of course the entire point of the protective gear is to enable idiotic and completely unsafe plays simply because bigger men hitting each other harder is exactly what the fan base wants.
If people decide they want a less high impact football game the solution is simple, remove the damn pads. You’ll have a few nitwits who paralyze themselves and things will dial down. There is a reason nobody pulls that nonsense in rugby.
PurpleGirl
@MattR: This is a great excerpt. I especially like these lines:
…Before you say their standard of living should be lowered to meet yours, how about considering for a moment whether yours should be improved to match theirs? Or maybe you like the race to the bottom.
poco
@danah gaz: Thanks. Did you check out this post about scabs at NFL: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/09/scabtackular
scott (the other one)
And there’s a reason 150,000,000 Americans don’t watch rugby.
Mnemosyne
@butler:
Fix’d. If you take the job of a union member while they’re on strike, you’re not a “replacement.” You’re a scab.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: The refs are locked out by the owners, not on strike. But scab still works
burnspbesq
@dr. bloor:
These particular widgets are going to start winning eight-digit damage awards on a regular basis. There’ a limit to how many of those even a billion-dollar enterprise can pay out.
burnspbesq
@mechwarrior oline:
I have only two words in response to you, dumbass.
Punitive damages.
dr. bloor
@burnspbesq: That’ll happen right after lawsuits take down the tobacco industry.
gene108
@Todd:
I think this dispute puts on display for most Americans how absolutely totally greedy and devoid of any sense of decency or shame the .1% have, if there is any doubt out there.
Calouste
@mechwarrior oline:
No, the reason that that stuff doesn’t really happen in rugby is because in rugby you’re not allowed to touch an opponent unless they have the ball.
Calouste
So, got some folks in to referee games with millions at stake, from whom errors are kind of expected, who don’t make that much money, don’t have any job security, and are expected to go back to a shitty job within about six months at the most. None of them is going to be in the slightest bit corrupt, right?
Schlemizel
Its not about the money Doug. Seriously, the refs could be asking for a dollar more, its not the money. These guys want to break all the unions. every. single. one.
They simply have to show everyone whos the boss, and that would be the guys with the money. They just allow the rest of us to wait on them.
Tom65
I’m conflicted on the issue of replacement refs, purely on a personal basis; a friend from college is one of the NFL replacements this season. He’s worked college games for years and is a well-respected ref. Unfortunately there’s very little room at the top of the ref pyramid – lots of perfectly qualified refs but very few slots. At some point, the game assignments have more to do with who you know and what conferences you’ve worked in than your actual on-field performance.
As for the union angle, I agree whole-heartedly that the NFL owners are a bunch of greedy bastards who would pay their players minimum wage if possible. Danny Snyder is prime example of the all-consuming, anything-for-a-dollar avarice that permeates the league.
Mack
I’m not sure I continue to watch football for “the carnage.” I love a well executed hit as much as the next guy, but I get just as excited watching a well thrown pass reach it’s target, or a runner who manages to find a hole when it looks like a solid wall in front of him.
That said, I worry more about the health care benefits of retired players more than I do the ref’s retirement plans. Most of these guys work full time jobs elsewhere. But the players do not, and they pay a steep price health-wise.
A second week should see improvement,but I’d like to see the refs back soon.