Replacement Refs: The Breaking Point?
I haven't blogged in a while, so here's this.
Sports! Yay!
It's (American) Football season, my favorite time of year. The NFL is back, something I'm especially happy about. I might be more interested in college, but the schools I went to will never win a championship, were not really known for their great athletic programs, so I tend to lean toward professional. I like the NFL a lot. Every game seems like a big deal, even between the bad teams. Every game gets broadcast on a major network (or the NFL's own network), with play by play commentators who get different games throughout the year. Unlike radio, TV guys aren't local and there's something that makes it all seem more... important? National? I don't know. The point is, the ESPN crew isn't going to be broadcasting the Royals or the Padres when they're bad in baseball or the Warriors or Raptors in the NBA. Yet the Cleveland Browns or the Jacksonville Jaguars might get voices like Jim Nantz, Phil Simms, Mike Tirico, or Al Michaels painting the picture of the game for us and that seems to give it a grander scale.
It might be the parity as well, the idea that any year, rightly or wrongly, any team will figure something out and make a run to the playoffs and Super Bowl beyond. I looked at this a couple of years ago during the baseball playoffs. For better or worse, this country is ruled by football in the category of sport. So, of course, the situation right now with the NFL's replacement officials is getting a lot of attention.
Fans have always had a tense relationship with officials in any sport. They're hardly noticed until they make a call that hurts the fan's team and then they're Lucifer incarnate. In this case, though, we're realizing that we have a case of not appreciating what we had until we lost it. NFL football is a complicated game with a ridiculous number of rules and procedures that officials need to learn. It's the only major sport where the officials explain out loud the penalty that occurred. The penalties in football have an impact on the game that are lessened in other sports. It's a major reason the NFL has pioneered instant replay and review. By contrast, baseball is slow to adopt these innovations in spite of its known flaws. Missed calls can certainly affect the outcome in baseball, but there are so many that it seems such calls are few and far between. Basketball has an accepted culture of certain players getting certain calls and times in the game where violations are acceptably not handed out. There's a sense of blemish on these judgments in these sports.
Not so with the NFL. Some fans may gripe about instant replay and challenges slowing down the game, but most concede that the right call is the most important thing. It adds precision and gives the sport more legitimacy in the minds of fans. If a team wins a football game, we want to make sure that was the true outcome as far as we can.
That brings us to the replacement officials. At first, it seemed like we could all simply suffer through it, accept a slightly lesser product until the NFL and the regular officials finished their labor agreement. There would be hiccups and mistakes to be sure, but it was the thing we had to accept.
We're starting to see the effects, though, partially because those who follow such things are scrutinizing the replacements so much. There's a stat out there that home teams were getting fewer penalties than visiting teams by quite a lot. Maybe that's a trend or maybe it's just how things have started. But what's clear is that the replacement officials are slowing down the games. Game which used to be close to 3 hours are stretching over the 3.5 mark and approaching 4. Pass interference is being called inconsistently. At times, some replacements seem to hold their flags in unnecessarily while others act like they're playing yellow, fluttery hot potato, tossing them every other play. These would be expected, though. It's a complicated rule book and these refs need time to learn the game as it is.
What gets the media's attention are the major screw ups. We're talking Hochuli, Chargers-Broncos level but in some cases worse. As in Missouri Fifth Down worse. We're talking the Seahawks getting an extra timeout against the Cardinals. We're talking the 49ers getting an extra timeout against the Vikings. We're talking the Raiders getting a final chance at the Hail Mary against the Chargers. And that might have worked out for the Raiders because as the Packers/Seahawks game showed us, the officials may have given the Raiders and TD on an interception. Fans tuned in because... well, it's still the NFL. Fans still want to see the game at its highest level. They'll watch an inferior product for that reason. But it still makes you wonder how long the NFL can justify putting it out there. How much criticism can they take, how many mistakes will be exposed, before "The Shield" loses its luster?
And I cannot believe I just wrote a blog with that many paragraphs about a game. More pointless posts to come!
Sports! Yay!
It's (American) Football season, my favorite time of year. The NFL is back, something I'm especially happy about. I might be more interested in college, but the schools I went to will never win a championship, were not really known for their great athletic programs, so I tend to lean toward professional. I like the NFL a lot. Every game seems like a big deal, even between the bad teams. Every game gets broadcast on a major network (or the NFL's own network), with play by play commentators who get different games throughout the year. Unlike radio, TV guys aren't local and there's something that makes it all seem more... important? National? I don't know. The point is, the ESPN crew isn't going to be broadcasting the Royals or the Padres when they're bad in baseball or the Warriors or Raptors in the NBA. Yet the Cleveland Browns or the Jacksonville Jaguars might get voices like Jim Nantz, Phil Simms, Mike Tirico, or Al Michaels painting the picture of the game for us and that seems to give it a grander scale.
It might be the parity as well, the idea that any year, rightly or wrongly, any team will figure something out and make a run to the playoffs and Super Bowl beyond. I looked at this a couple of years ago during the baseball playoffs. For better or worse, this country is ruled by football in the category of sport. So, of course, the situation right now with the NFL's replacement officials is getting a lot of attention.
Fans have always had a tense relationship with officials in any sport. They're hardly noticed until they make a call that hurts the fan's team and then they're Lucifer incarnate. In this case, though, we're realizing that we have a case of not appreciating what we had until we lost it. NFL football is a complicated game with a ridiculous number of rules and procedures that officials need to learn. It's the only major sport where the officials explain out loud the penalty that occurred. The penalties in football have an impact on the game that are lessened in other sports. It's a major reason the NFL has pioneered instant replay and review. By contrast, baseball is slow to adopt these innovations in spite of its known flaws. Missed calls can certainly affect the outcome in baseball, but there are so many that it seems such calls are few and far between. Basketball has an accepted culture of certain players getting certain calls and times in the game where violations are acceptably not handed out. There's a sense of blemish on these judgments in these sports.
Not so with the NFL. Some fans may gripe about instant replay and challenges slowing down the game, but most concede that the right call is the most important thing. It adds precision and gives the sport more legitimacy in the minds of fans. If a team wins a football game, we want to make sure that was the true outcome as far as we can.
That brings us to the replacement officials. At first, it seemed like we could all simply suffer through it, accept a slightly lesser product until the NFL and the regular officials finished their labor agreement. There would be hiccups and mistakes to be sure, but it was the thing we had to accept.
We're starting to see the effects, though, partially because those who follow such things are scrutinizing the replacements so much. There's a stat out there that home teams were getting fewer penalties than visiting teams by quite a lot. Maybe that's a trend or maybe it's just how things have started. But what's clear is that the replacement officials are slowing down the games. Game which used to be close to 3 hours are stretching over the 3.5 mark and approaching 4. Pass interference is being called inconsistently. At times, some replacements seem to hold their flags in unnecessarily while others act like they're playing yellow, fluttery hot potato, tossing them every other play. These would be expected, though. It's a complicated rule book and these refs need time to learn the game as it is.
What gets the media's attention are the major screw ups. We're talking Hochuli, Chargers-Broncos level but in some cases worse. As in Missouri Fifth Down worse. We're talking the Seahawks getting an extra timeout against the Cardinals. We're talking the 49ers getting an extra timeout against the Vikings. We're talking the Raiders getting a final chance at the Hail Mary against the Chargers. And that might have worked out for the Raiders because as the Packers/Seahawks game showed us, the officials may have given the Raiders and TD on an interception. Fans tuned in because... well, it's still the NFL. Fans still want to see the game at its highest level. They'll watch an inferior product for that reason. But it still makes you wonder how long the NFL can justify putting it out there. How much criticism can they take, how many mistakes will be exposed, before "The Shield" loses its luster?
And I cannot believe I just wrote a blog with that many paragraphs about a game. More pointless posts to come!