That’s a nice number to throw out there, but can you back it up?
Didn’t think so.
You’d have to go back and review every call made by every regular official and compare it to every call made by the replacements. Then take into account whether it was an obvious call or not.
Good luck.
I’ll go by what I see and what I clearly remember about the regular officials. They were terrible.

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Eagleswin IIRC the guy who runs the NCAA officials is a locked out NFL official (remember, all those officials have other jobs). So when it came time to find the “best” replacements, he obviously prevented that from happening.

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Exactly. And on top of that, the NCAA doesn’t want to have to deal with all the media/coach/player/fan backlash created by their own replacements. It’s the NFL’s problem (which I think is less a problem than the media would like it to be), why would the NCAA want to effectively take the bullet for them?

Eagleswin IIRC the guy who runs the NCAA officials is a locked out NFL official (remember, all those officials have other jobs). So when it came time to find the “best” replacements, he obviously prevented that from happening.

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I did not know that. It seems like that would be a conflict of interest. He’s acting in his personal best interest rather than in the best interest of his NCAA officials.

We get huge articles on here about the new refs other jobs but we never hear about the old refs other jobs. It would’ve been nice to see a huge article on the front page talking about this old ref’s conflict of interest.

And yes, I love the notion of another union being put in their place for thinking a group of employees can extort compensation from a company by threatening to screw the business and ultimately me the consumer. Unions have no place in America any longer. There are so many labor laws in existence now that the unions only contribution is creating discourse between the employee and management.

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Eagleswin IIRC the guy who runs the NCAA officials is a locked out NFL official (remember, all those officials have other jobs). So when it came time to find the “best” replacements, he obviously prevented that from happening.

My problem is the procedural stuff- not knowing when to do clock run-offs, not always knowing from what point a penalty should be marked from, not knowing when a coach can and can’t throw a challenge flag and what to do when they throw one they shouldn’t have, etc.

Overall, I just think it reflects incredibly poorly on the League’s respect for the game. The issues they are holding out on would cost them little to resolve. This is not a pro-labor stance, just a common sense one.

Like the lawyer said to Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network- just settle with them. In the long run, it’s a parking ticket.

It’s not ideal, and I’d prefer they reach a deal, but the bad calls, longer games, general confustion, etc don’t exactly ruin the entertainment value. They’re just annoying.

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I’m also not sure why the NCAA is getting a pass on this either. The best choice would’ve been to use the DIV I football refs for the duration, same as they did with the last labor dispute with the refs. This time the division I refs were banned from working NFL games by the NCAA.

As in most situations, you work with what you have, not what you wish you had. The NFL is working with the best refs available during this lockout.

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Bingo. The announcers have definately been part of the problem so far. Guys would never criticize a player or coach or league exec or even the old refs when they make a bad call feel free to go ballistic on the new refs at every opportunity.

Take Gruden. The guy has been Johnny Sunshine ever since he entered the broadcast booth. Never say’s a bad word about any player or coach or old referee. He was left with 3 choices during the Bronco’s game :

1. Criticize Peyton Manning for throwing 3 INTS and talk about how his passes seem to float on the deeper routes.

2. Criticize John Fox for being unprofessional. Besides yelling at the refs, Fox was pushing players and encouraging his own players to disregard the refs.

3. Criticize the replacement refs because you assume that the old referees will come back and you’ll never have to see them again.

He never said a bad word about Fox or Manning the entire game. Fox was a HUGE part as to why that game got out of control. The thing is, if FOX had treated the old officials the same way, the same thing would have happened but he would never do that because he’d have to deal with them game after game, year after year.

The system only works when everyone acts like adults.

The media is piling on Goodell and the NFL for the most part. Unfortunately to make their point they have to show the egregious difference between the replacements and the real refs. Many in the media do a fair job of pointing out that the replacements are doing their job to the best of their ability, but that just isn’t good enough. Now there are statistics being provided that show what many people already could see, but not put a number on: The replacements are over 200% worse than the regular refs. Anyone who is saying it isn’t that bad, either isn’t watching a large number of games, doesn’t know much about the game, doesn’t care about the quality of the game they are watching or works for the NFL front office. It IS happening and it will get worse. Blaming the media for blowing it up in this day and age of 24/7 coverage and feedback is like blaming your dog for eating a steak that you left on the kitchen floor. Blaming the players for taking advantage of the refs is a complete cop-out for addressing the real issue. If you are going to blame anyone, blame yourself for continuing to support the NFL and Goodell.

It happens.

Nothing will be done until one of the Ref’s is caught taking a bribe to throw the game, IF that happens, we’ll see the real Ref’s quickly, otherwise it’s status quo.

Nobody watching these games are going, “Well, they’re throwing about the right number of flags.”

It’s the quality of the calls and non-calls that are an issue.

If it’s true that the league’s own referee grading system has found the replacements making over 3 times as many mistakes as the regular refs (30 versus 8 or 9), it doesn’t make me feel better knowing that at least the same number of flags are being thrown.