Girls, this is your discussion peice to discuss with the guys if you no nothing about football.   First, the situation:

- The referee union is striking because they want more money
- The amount they want comes to an additional 1% of NFL revenue
- There is no end sight, and because of that, there are scab referees
- Most of these refs have been called up from college where rules are different

I’ve been waiting to post on this because:

- The old refs still made major mistakes every week
- The new refs deserved time to prove themselves
- I wasn’t sure how it would effect the game

After this week, I’m sure of the following things:

- The NFL does not give a shit about making the best possible game
- The NFL does not care about it’s players, owners, refs or anything besides money
- The NFL is actually the most evil corporation out there

When talking to guys about this, the position to take is that at this point in the game there is no logical conclusion to be drawn from this situation except Rodger Goodall (who is the NFL commissioner) only cares about the money that is sucked up by the fans and teams.  In truth, this is something that has been happening for a while, but the scabs are one of the best examples of it.

The scabs have been making horrible calls – I could point you to some great examples of that, but instead, I’m going to give you a quote from inside the NFL’s own administration in the wake of all the fines that were handed out for player and coach reactions to bad calls last Sunday and Monday.

“The purpose was to send a message that everyone has a responsibility on respect for the game,” NFL executive vice president Ray Anderson explained by phone Thursday night. “Everyone needs to be mindful that this respect for the game has to be practiced at all times, and that the events of Monday evening, in the first half of that game, represented unacceptable behavior.”

So basically, the NFL’s stance on the scabs is – “They may suck, but you’re going to respect them or we’ll fine you.”  So they understand that they aren’t putting out the best game possible for the fans, and the best possible product, and if anyone makes it appear it that way, they’ll fine them.   At this point, if I was part of the players union or the owners, I’d be walking out too.  They are basically saying that they have to respect the fact that they are mis-deciding their wins / losses and penalties per players.

The sad part is, this is the way the NFL has been acting for years.  Another example is Thursday night games.  This year is the first year that Thursday games happen every week.  This is important because Thursday games (with the exception of the Thanksgiving Day games) are typically crap games.  The reason for this is that many of the teams don’t have enough time to rest and recoup, watch film, and prepare for the games.  Some teams, depending on if they traveled to another location the week before only get one day to practice before the game.

I mean, look at the scores of the Thursday night games this week – Green Bay blows out Chicago and Giants blow out Carolina. These are products of teams who are tired, weak, and unable to compete on a compressed schedule.  The true winners of these games are almost always the teams which have a deeper bench.

The reason that the NFL is doing this is because Thursday games are aired exclusively on NFL Network – boosting it’s rating share and also reducing costs associated with having games on other networks.  The public eats it up!  More football for us!  (Although, it doesn’t matter if it’s good football apparently.)

This week has showed us definitively that the NFL has nothing to worry about with regard to the refs.  The NFL is a multi-billion dollar industry, and after last Sunday, their number one priority should be putting out the best possible product.  They are never going to do that until it starts cutting into their profits.  This season will be remembered as the games that could have gone either way depending on if they had gotten a different scab ref.  Even if the players, management, and fans complained in individual blog posts like this – they would have no incentive to change what is going on.  Because we will still watch.  We will still go to games, and we will still rely on the NFL for our entertainment on Sunday, Monday, and now Thursday.