Thread: Can you believe how BAD these replacement refs have been. Pitiful.

Originally Posted by soulman

That was my biggest gripe last night. OK you might miss a call but for God's sake learn the damn rules. That PI call against Tillman was ludicrous. How can you interfere with a guy who is out of bounds to begin with trying catch up with a ball that was thrown out of bounds and should have been determined to be uncatchable? COME ON MAN!

There was an even more basic reason why the call shouldn't have gone that way. It was the WR who made the contact, not Tillman, and then the WR who dragged Tillman out of bounds while holding him.

Linda has a theme song for those sluggos in the stripe shirts courtesy of words and music by one of my all time favorites, Warren Zevon. (RIP)



Damn she was hot when she was just a sweet young thing and that voice...........I was so in love with her. Now she looks like and old matronly dowager but that lady can still sing, woo.

End the referee lockout now

The league and the NFL Referees Association need to settle their differences

Originally Published: August 17, 2012
By Ashley Fox | ESPN.com

Al Messerschmidt/Getty ImagesWith the regular season starting soon, Ed Hochuli and his experienced colleagues need to return now.

Where is Ed Hochuli? The National Football League needs to bring him -- and his 120 officiating brethren -- back immediately. End this lockout with the NFL Referees Association and the madness of using replacement officials.

The NFL is a $9 billion industry and growing. It can't have unqualified, inexperienced officials making calls that affect the outcomes of games. It can't have men, and a woman, who have never worked an NFL game step in and help legislate player safety, supposedly one of the league's most important initiatives. It is lunacy. It will affect the integrity of the game. It already has. (Another punch in the gut of that lying bastard Roger Goodell and his bogus issue of player safety)

The league and the referees' union have dug in on the issues. Fine. That happens in negotiations. The league is holding firm that the union will cave, and the union is hoping the prospective nightmare of replacement refs in the regular season will spur the league to concede. (What a familiar story huh?)

There are about three weeks to go before the regular season. As my colleague Andrew Brandt likes to say: deadlines spur action. So there is still time. There is still hope. (Yeah.......Git 'er dun')

(Now let's have a little look at just how well these Div. III and HS bozos are doing shall we?)

But the league is dancing on delicate ground. Thus far, the replacement officials have been a joke. The referee for the Hall of Fame game between New Orleans and Arizona flubbed the coin toss, announcing that the Saints had won the toss and elected to defer when the Cardinals had actually won it. That same referee, Craig Ochoa, twice referred to Atlanta as Arizona in the Falcons' opener against Baltimore. His voice was noticeably shaky. (And so was his officiating, could that be any more obvious?)
AP Photo/Paul Jasienski This preseason, the NFL's replacement officials have made mistakes with even the simplest rulings.

The referee for the Monday night game between Dallas and Oakland had trouble operating his microphone. Another screwed up another coin flip. There have been missed spots, a messed up 10-second runoff, missed calls and no calls.

In the New York Giants opener against Jacksonville, Giants punt returner Jayron Hosley was called for holding while "RETURNING A PUNT"!!!!!! A back judge for the Buffalo-Washington game called a touchback on a punt downed at the 4-yard line. (Well the second one is a mere judgement call. Anybody from the National Association for the Blind could have missed that one. But I would have loved to have heard the Head Referee's explanation of the first one.)

In some cases, crews have swallowed their whistles yet in the Hall of Fame game, they called 10 penalties, seven of which were the most basic, obvious calls in the game: holding, false start and defensive offside.

And this is the preseason. The speed of the game isn't what it will be in Week 1. There isn't much crowd noise. There is little pressure on either side to win the game. The outcomes are essentially meaningless.

What happens when 80,000 people are in the stands and the players are playing at a noticeably faster pace? What happens when the outcomes matter? There is practice speed and preseason speed. And then there is regular-season speed. It requires an enormous adjustment. This isn't small college, arena football or the lingerie league. This is the show.

The NFL has asked coaches and players not to comment on the officiating. It is understandable. A bunch of moaning and groaning about the quality of the replacement officials would hurt the league's negotiating power.
(Just one more example of the monumental stupidity of the league owners, Goodell, and the NFL office. Holy Cow Batman, all fans have to do is watch how these bozos officiate a preseason game and the NFL's bargaining power has already been destroyed. Staff!!!! Where's that "ostrich with head in sand" smilie I've been asking for?)
Some players, like Drew Brees, have ignored the league's request. Many more likely would if the replacement refs -- let's call them what they are, scabs -- worked Week 1. Just imagine if an official bungled a call that cost a team a game. Everyone makes mistakes (just ask Hochuli), but the likelihood of a person with zero NFL experience making a game-changing mistake is way higher. Every game in the NFL matters. Every game is valuable. (If they start the season with those jokers you know it's gonna happen and not just in one game either)

Coaches and players would be outraged if a game turned on a call.
Think they would bite their tongues then? Think again. (And not just the coaches and players. For the price we as fans pay to watch NFL football in one way or another I think we deserves more consideration than this from those bastards in their luxury suites with their well stocked bars and catered lobster lunches)

As in any labor dispute, neither side is blameless. The officials, who are part-time employees, want to keep their pension plan fully funded, even though 14 of the league's 32 teams don't maintain defined benefit plans for their employees. The league wants to add three officiating crews (21 people total), which the referees' union said Thursday would decrease the salaries of the other 121 officials and turn the pension plan into a 401K. (Might as well give in on that one and let them roll it into a Defined Contribution/401k plan. That's how it's done these days. Defined Benefit Plans are becoming as extinct as dinosaurs.)

For coaches, players and fans, the only thing that matters is that a deal gets done. It must. There are more than 3,000 former players suing the NFL over the concussion issue. The company that insured the league last season against concussion lawsuits is trying to separate itself from the league. (Well that shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. They smell "class action" judgements coming down the pike and while they love to collect huge premiums they really hate paying out huge settlements. Cuts into all those free awards junkets the execs get to go on every year where they congratulate one another on how much profit they made)

And the NFL is OK with using inexperienced replacement officials to determine late hits, horse collar tackles, illegal contact and roughing the passer? Roger Goodell has made player safety his mantra. Through rules changes, the game is evolving. Technology is improving. (If they don't settle with the regular officials and as long as it saves them money I guess they must be. Roger Goddell is a joke. This "Saintgate" thing is gonna end up being his "Watergate", or maybe that should be his "Waterloo" Emporers always lose their heads or get banished eventually)

To even consider having amateurs on the field to legislate the game is asinine. For the good of the game, the league has got to bring Ed Hochuli and his people back.

Pops always said " there's 2 kinds of people in the world " :
- those who are properly trained .... and those who aren't.

Originally Posted by Blue Horse-shoe

Pops always said " there's 2 kinds of people in the world " :
- those who are properly trained .... and those who aren't.

Quite wise and simple, but true.


And John Hiatt said;

Now, there's only two things in life but I forget what they are
It seems we're either hanging on a moonbeam's coat tails
Or wishing on stars

The wishing on stars part is what's gonna happen if the NFL lets those bozo replacements ref regular season games.

I would love to see Roger Goodell lose his job. Unfortunately, the next person who will take his place will probably be an even bigger hypocrite.

Joe Buck wants to suck Favre's cock, 4th. He's going for all the Hall of Fame quarterbacks from the past generation or so.

Originally Posted by Dagan81

Thanks for clearing that up for me, soul. Now I feel stupid because I didn't know the rule. I will try to go back and look at tape to see if the ball was definitely in the air or not. But I could have sworn that it was. Of course, they only showed the part of the replay from the angle of Wilhite and the Redskins' receiver, not anyone else.

It's not stupid brother it's a really tough call on some plays. There's the ref trying to keep track of where 5 yards ends and at the same time keep and eye on the release of the ball. On some of those quick slants it's a very tough call but the overriding rule is whether or not the ball was in the air and whether or not it was a catchable ball.

These "replacements" don't seem to have a clue and that's not surprising. College rules aren't the same as NFL rules and they also don't see much press coverage in college so those type of tight calls seldom come up. All the more reason why it's foolish to even attempt to play with those guys officiating. Many of us could call as good or better a game.