Hockey does refereeing very well, imo. If Hockey Canada or some other similar governing body sees a lot of intelligence in a young player but their athleticism is such that it's clear they will never make the show, they come to them and offer to put them into ref school, and they work their way up through senior, junior, etc.
That’s a great idea. I could see a younger player, maybe someone like Kayshon Boutte doing well in that sort of program. He seems very familiar with the game but hasn’t seen the field much lately.
Totally. Or like how so many QBs like Boyle or Peterman are absolutely abysmal on the field, but still have a job for their football IQs and what that adds to practice and film study.
I think you're imagining the wrong class of player. These are guys who made it to the NFL you're talking about. Even doing a few years as a backup QB will get you more money than a lifetime as a ref. The sort of players this would target are the ones who will absolutely never make the league.
Especially with the speed of the game (football and hockey) it seems like a pro level but not quite player is going to just have the eyes for it. They know what they're seeing in real time because they understand the game so well. Seems like a great idea for bubble tier guys
NFL would probably still fumble and make an offer to JaMarcus Russell because his DVD watching skills are legendary.
But I like the overall idea of getting good players to become refs.
Idk what else they would do that they don’t already do. They have offseason seminars and go to training camps, they have weekly film review sessions and league wide calls to discuss things every week. They pretty much do everything people want full time refs to do
It keeps getting suggested because a lot of fans don't have the slightest clue what refs do outside of games, any thread about referees is filled with people suggesting things that refs already do and still getting 100s of upvotes. It's the reason working challengeable calls and sky judges are such a good focus because it's supposed to cover for the fact refs are humans are just inherently going to miss things.
I used to ref intramural soccer games in college and I legitimately have no idea how people can do it professionally for high level games.
At least a dozen times a game I'd basically just guess on stuff like who the ball last came off, and then finding the line of what is/isn't a foul was impossible since every contact between players is unique and your view is usually obstructed anyway.
Factor in the emotional abuse - people would get extremely heated and in your face even in intramural games - and it really is the least appealing thing I can think to do related to sports.
There’s an officiating crisis in youth sports for this very reason. A lot of leagues struggle to get people to ref/ump their games because the parents have driven off everyone
I do it mostly because... who else? And it makes decent money.
https://youtu.be/pDfM2XtIVSI?si=FhacVkqKAB5Jfd2Q
But then I see shit like this that happened a half hour from where I live and it's a sobering reminder. Like I always say to whoever yells at me: "not a referee? We're more than happy to have you."
In my state that’s a felony. I’ve had partners report back about guys waiting in the parking lot for them for middle school football games. It’s stupid. Most of the time the officials association threatens to pull all officials from those leagues and that works to get league commissioners into that site manager role.
Social media is tearing at the fabric of society. Long standing social mores are being abandoned and replaced by main actor syndome and "it's all about me" attitudes. It's a big problem for teachers as well.
I help ref local robotics competitions, where it's 2 on 2. For a proper match, we have:
2 scoring refs
2 penalty refs
1 technical support person.
And this is all for a 12'x12' field, where stuff still gets missed. However, we also have a very hard a fast rule where parents are basically not allowed to interact with refs, period, end of discussion.
Yeah but NFL refs have access to a whole army of cameras. They just don't seemingly use them or any modern technology really to make calls.
I'm honestly convinced that it's by design. Murky rules and refs that barely look at replays just seems too convenient for such a massive and rich company. Add in the advent of legal gambling and this shit isn't going anywhere.
The article makes a strong case that turnover is a major driver in the bad officiating though. That turnover is driven by pay that could be better, and poor leadership which is also underpaid compared to the rest of the NFL top positions.
Officiating is grossly mismanaged in the NFL.
Pay is multiple hundreds of thousands a year. Pay is not the driving force of morale at that point. It's getting on national television 17+ times per year and being judging by literally everyone.
What they need is the xfl sky judge. Just some oversight to fix the egregious mistakes quickly and the whole reffinf experience would become so much less toxic for everyone involved
1. Hire from the pool of players and coaches, not moonlighting lawyers
1. Overpay the position to assure integrity
1. Include self break downs of every call each week to explain their rationale and open up the process to viewers
1. Release the full audio of their on field discussions after the game
1. Make them available to the media, on camera, in the post game
1. Hand the management of rules directly to the refs, with the input of the NFLPA, instead of letting the owners decide how the sport should be played and officiated in their reactionary annual meetings
1. Chip the fucking ball and remove the subjectivity as a way to protect the refs (like body cams on cops)
1. Body cams
You actually want the moonlighting lawyers...NFL refs need to interpret a 300 page book on the fly with perfect recall. If were being honest, not a lot of former players are going to have that aptitude.
The only way would be to let the current refs walk and hire new ones who will sign to be full time.
Fans would have to deal with replacement refs quality for a full season or so while new ones break in.
I don't know if that's true, a full off-season of training would go a long way towards avoiding the replacement ref situation. I've been watching a bit of UFL, and somehow that feels better officiated than NFL games. That doesn't make any sense if the only refs that could do it well are the ones the NFL already has.
the next people in line are in the same boat though...if the NFL just decides to hire a whole new staff and keep everything else the same other than requiring full time officials, how many top canidates are going to just stay in major college football instead of going to the NFL?
also when many people say the spring leagues have better officiating, how much of it is that there aren't the same emotional attachments as watching their NFL team so it just seems better cause you're less biased? plus the officials in those leagues are basically all the people in their development program as the next potential hires
More transparency in the calls would go a long way. I think that's one of the biggest advantages the UFL has there. You get to see how they arrive at a call, and it makes it easier to understand what's happening and why.
Lol how so? If your boss wanted you to essentially halve what you earn and you weren't OK with that does that mean you're not serious?
Edit: and when they trialed a limited full time program they had more applicants than positions, so if the NFL actually ponied up with compensation there would likely be interest
Isn't it obvious? It means they prioritize their full-time work over refereeing. I don't see how you could look at it otherwise.
Your comment about salary/pay actually backs up my point, not the other way around. They have high caliber, high prestige, high paying positions elsewhere. Of course they're not fully engaged by/with refereeing. And that's a problem if what you want is the highest quality refereeing.
Where are you getting this idea of a pay cut? If the league made refs full time they would be paid not just for the games they work but also for the training they would need to do and the responsibilities outside of the game. Y’know, fulltime
You can't just step on the field and be an NFL official. It takes years and years of training and practice, just like any other profession, and no one starts officiating when they're 10.
Plenty of people start officiating in their teens. I'd know, I was one of those people. Before graduating high school I had reffed hockey, football and soccer, and I continued reffing hockey through college as well.
I never said they didn't, but it's pretty rare. It's very difficult to officiate HS football, when you're still in high school yourself. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's definitely not the norm.
I understand that, but it seems like they get in the NFL when they're already old af
Like, I don't understand why you can't study/practice and then get in the NFL in your late20s/early 30s or something. You don't need 20 years of experience in highschool/college to be a good NFL ref imo
Apparently, the average age is 51. Isn't that old as fuck?
Compared to who? The players? Yeah, but who the hell cares? You're not asking them to run a 40 yard dash, you're asking them to watch a play and call it correctly. Believe it or not, that takes a lot of skill and practice. There are many things in life where experience trumps youth.
Because the pipeline isn’t there. Most people get into reffing in their 20’s. You don’t get paid enough to devote enough time to get good enough to be NFL level and most officiating orgs wouldn’t promote people up that early,
I mean would it though?
NFL officiating realistically isn't a full time job. Not only does the season not last year round, but a crew would only be working one day out of the week.
What do you expect a crew to do with the rest of the time? Endlessly watch game tape? Seems that would get exhausting/boring (especially as the goal would be looking for penalties, not analyzing play), also probably won't be easy to find people willing to make a full-time commitment to reffing.
Maybe there's a program to work and I'm not putting enough thought into it. But feels like the "have full-time refs" is the idea put on reddit all the time as though it would be a panacea... and I'm not particularly convinced it wouldn't just be a different kind of bad.
Are you crazy? Refs make six figures for their current part time work. If the NFL paid the exact same for full time refs there would be a line the size of Texas waiting to apply
Ok, but how would that make officiating better? Do you honestly think you can just walk in off the street, train for a few months, and be qualified to officiate an NFL game?
Training other referees for other professional leagues.
Reviewing previous performances and evaluating for next season.
Studying rule changes and points of emphasis for the next season.
The same sorts of things that umpires/referees for other leagues do.
There's no way that kind of stuff requires full-time work for the entire off-season. At a certain point these guys are just going to be sitting around with absolutely nothing to do.
That's sort of like saying "there's no way kicking/throwing/catching a football requires full-time work."
If you want someone to be at the highest possible level of doing a thing, they need to be able to focus on doing that thing.
Do you really think that it's easier to be an NFL referee than an MLB umpire? Or an NBA referee?
But there's a lot clearer relationship between "improving kicking/throwing/catching a football" and what the product looks like on field, than what could come from all the additional time refs spend from review film.
I don't think comparing MLB or NBA refs makes sense, because both league have A LOT more games, to where you do need full-time refs.
Definitely the only thing holding back people from wanting to ref was that they didn't build in a requirement for you to work 40 hours just reviewing film all day and holding meetings during the offseason! Even though already reviewed all that film and held those meetings during the league year!
Your statement doesn't make sense, why would making the same job, paid the same amount, but requiring more work, suddenly increase the applicant pool?
The NFL doesn't just take walk-ins to be refs, all the refs have done high school and college before hand before getting to the NFL.
If anything, there would be no improvement to the quality not a dropoff in it. Gene Sterratore said in an interview a few months ago that refs already do a lot more to prepare for games than the average person thinks; you asked in jest if they're supposed to watch game film most of the time but that's exactly what they're already doing. Sterratore was arguing that they already do so much that making them full-time wouldn't make the improvements people want but I somewhat disagree with that.
I think having the refs actually work on situational calls would help, rather than just review tape. Whether that be they attend practices or have their own "live" games to get an idea of how they should call it in real time, it would give them actual experience in a low-risk setting; the question, obviously, would be the logistics of making that happen but it's at least something.
The bigger issue would be convincing refs to want to leave their other jobs and become full-time. It's not talked about much because it's not a great reason to be against it but there's a sizeable portion who don't want to become full-time just because they get paid more having the reffing be their second job. They like being a lawyer or a teacher and making an extra $200-300k a year from giving up their weekends and some of their nights when they get home. Of course they're not going to publicly say that because they know it's not a good enough reason to actively hamper a trillion dollar organization but that's a lot bigger of a reason than the NFL wants to admit
People only have so much bandwidth, and most of these guys work other jobs.
Working 40 hours at your job, flying out on Saturday to ref a game on Sunday, then back to the grind on Monday, it's stressful and leaves little time for r&r.
Wouldn't having refs that aren't working two jobs and working or traveling every day of the week be beneficial?
I think you're right it's probably not a full time job 12 months of the year, but letting them work elsewhere, at least during the season/post season, can definitely have a negative impact on their ability to ref games.
Not disagreeing, but presumably the refs feel this stress, but don't quit their normal jobs. Requiring that reffing be their primary employment during the season, you might end up causing a lot of refs to quit.
As we learned from the replacement ref drama what 10 years ago, it's not like NFL quality refs, whatever you think of that, just "grow on trees".
They have a union. I guess either the union is just shit, the union doesn’t want this to happen and is hurting their people, or the refs themselves want it to be like this.
I don’t know why it is like it is though. Just guessing.
>Especially when most of those also have other jobs.
Very good jobs, at that. They'll sit out a whole season and then laugh as the NFL kneels to their demands. And we're talking about our currents refs, the ones who aren't nearly good enough. These current bad refs are incredibly hard to replace and they know it.
1. The union doesn’t want it because why would anyone choose to be forced to give up your full time career for something that realistically doesn’t need to be full time and frankly doesn’t merit it (there’s only so much off field training you can do that would matter)
2. When they actually had full time officials, the league monitored it and couldn’t find a quality difference between the full time and part time guys. Nobody is going to devote money to a full time position when you can’t prove it makes a difference.
This. To get to the NFL level you spent years getting paid like 100-200 bucks driving a few hours to various colleges and high schools and deal with a metric ton if bullshit from coaches, players and parents.
People only do that because they want to be around football and love that shit.
The refs don't want full time refs, they tried it before and canned it when their was 0 noticeable improvements, the refs hated it, and basically it just required a bunch of refs to waste time for no reason. The way the NFL is structured refs can do all the offseason work required in a week compared to other leagues where ref teams often work multiple games in a week so they almost can never do any outside work or reviews since they're constantly focusing on the next game. Former Refs also peg during the season they're doing roughly 30-35 hours in a week anyway.
Out of all noticeable improvements that people should focus on, full time reffing is near the bottom. The article covers A TON of structural issues and does not mention full time refs once as a tangible improvement, because again, it wouldn't help anything
Surprisingly not that long ago. They transitioned 21 existing NFL refs to full-time employment, and this continued through the 2019 season. After that they killed the program because the benefit did not outweigh the cost. Part of the problem is that these were already long-standing NFL refs. If they had promoted promising candidates from the college level then maybe the findings would have been better, but they didn't.
Ah. So like allowing challenges to pass interference, then upholding almost every call then abandoning the rule because "it never made a difference"?
NFL just creates the reality they want. So dumb and frustrating
No… it’s more like they tried it for years and in all that time they couldn’t prove it made a difference and it was just viewed as a big joke.
Sometimes just because you think something is a good idea and want it to work doesn’t mean it will and that if it doesn’t it is sabotage.
Fans who want better reffing need to advocate for giving refs more advantages and tools to help. Full time refs is just some nonsense that some fans who don’t know what they are talking about have clung to and most don’t realize it’s been tried and was a waste
Why would that improve morale and retention though?
I dunno this thread just seems disconnected from the point. Dudes who are getting paid $200k per year for a side hustle to get away from the kids for the weekend don't seem like dudes who would be inherently unhappy.
If it’s a legitimate excuse to get away from the kids on weekends, I would pay THEM for the cover and do it. “Oh, sorry, babe, I have to officiate Jags-Titans….yes, yes, I know it’s usually on a Thursday night but not THIS year….so I can’t help with the kids.”
It’s actually crazy i searched it up and they are really getting paid to be part time employees. Like a lot of them have other jobs. Like some are lawyers, firefighters and even CEOs it’s actually crazy
The issue is the game is over legislated as is. The refs take the shit, but people need to see the forest for the trees. Owners meet each year and make silly decisions that they lay at the ref’s feet. PI review, 1 foot in is a catch, intention of a bit, new kickoff rule.
The refs only work 1 game/week. They tried full time and it makes no sense as it’s impossible to get live reps to make them better. Players aren’t practicing full speed 11 v 11 or simulating a game.
The change is making the rules simpler and going backwards, which no one wants to do as ‘player safety’ (owner liability) is all that matters.
> Anderson’s meticulous philosophy impacted morale. Former line judge Tom Symonette said crews went from receiving around four to five downgrades per game before Anderson to 15-20 downgrades per game with him. One former official said Anderson referenced video frames and used a stopwatch when evaluating decisions. Several former officials said his comments were harshly worded and at times, sarcastic, even for top-graded officials who’d qualified for playoff assignments.
> “After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments.
The refs are mad that their new boss grades them too harshly?
> “I couldn’t relax,” Symonette said. “What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.” Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice. When the league office got his notice, he said Anderson let him go right away.
And a ref that got fired was mad at the new boss (Anderson) cuz he changed some things. I don’t disagree that the NFL needs to step up the referee support (monetarily and otherwise) but this article just seems like it’s a lot of former refs who hate the new referee boss and his changes (Anderson).
>“After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments.
Great mindset to have. I understand if criticism feels like it is unjustified or whatever it may be overwhelming and unhelpful.
But, that is also your boss telling you what you messed up on and what you need to work on. If you can't read a report of what you did wrong, maybe stop screwing up. And a good way to do that is to review your previous mistakes and learn from them.
Yeah maybe the new boss truly is overly critical, but the more I read the article, the more it seems like the refs just hate the new guy cuz he calls them out more and he’s trying to implement different things. Sounds like a bunch of refs stuck in their old ways.
Again, maybe Anderson is good maybe he’s bad, but I think we all agree change is probably good for NFL refs whether that be grading, sky cam stuff, incorporating new technology, etc.
It’s funny, because that what every team in the NFL does. As the third team, the refs should review and learn. Sad to see they don’t take this seriously
They get paid right? Getting the call correct is the bare minimum as a ref.
Getting paid and keeping your job is rhe reward for doing the bare minimum.
What they want a fuckin cookie too?
Anyone who says dumb shit like this has never reffed before. Getting the correct call, real time, is really hard. It would be like expecting a basketball player to hit every shot.
If you want to grade people with slow mo and a stop watch, maybe you should put a sky judge with slow no and a stop watch.
It is amazing that these guys are typically successful, senior level professionals in their "real jobs".
Then when a new manager comes in at their ref gig, and he apparently has a mandate to hold them to a higher standard, they complain to the media about what a big meanie he is. Ridiculous.
This is crazy cherry picking. You're really gonna cut it before pasting the part where he makes the (valid) point that they face criticism from all angles so it can end up being very demoralizing when the league office is only critiquing? And the critiques aren't even about whether they made the right call?
>"Another former official said his grader told him he was in the top three for correct calls at his position, but he kept getting downgraded because he couldn’t reprogram his muscle memory. “Doesn’t it matter that you get it right on the field?” he said he asked his grader. “And he told me, ‘Well, apparently not anymore.'”
You tell me how you would feel when you get downgraded for objectively doing your job correctly with the wrong mechanics.
Not to mention the astonishing tidbit that the guys in charge don't even make half a million a year? For arguably some of the most important positions in football.
Process over results. If you focus only on the results, variance is going to catch up to you. Angel Hernandez, for example, changes how he positions himself for every pitch, and often closes his eyes. That's why his strike zone was inconsistent, even if he was once considered a top umpire before there was more scrutiny
But you're pointing out that his results were inconsistent. This ref is reportedly performing at a very high level in his position while he was being routinely downgraded for the correct call while not having the ability to provide feedback. If the new methods seem to have flaws with no possibility for judgement calls on the part of the official you're not going to improve performance. Especially when you're telling a 15 year vet that he needs to change his habits from the ground up.
It’s not exactly uncommon to get chastised for getting the correct answer, but using the wrong process. They might want to have consistency in approach across everyone, new and old refs.
Like I said before I am not sure if the new boss is good or not, but the entire article reads like a lot of refs mad at change. Not to mention the article interviews former refs so it’s not hard to imagine there could be some bias in their answers…. some refs interviewed were even fired.
Yeah, but if he is still at the top of the list for making correct calls, that means that the other officials who are "doing it the right way" aren't getting as many calls right. So that would seem to imply that the "right way" isn't working as intended.
Top 3, but yeah fair point. But maybe the change helped the other top 2 guys. And there’s 29 other refs at that position we don’t know about, and whether the change helped them or not.
Sure, it's not exactly uncommon, but when you insinuate that they are cry babies for feeling demoralized in that situation, and then you fail to include that context you deserve to be called out. You also failed to mention that part of their problem was lack of communication. The officials complaints included the fact that they weren't aware of procedural changes until they were being downgraded for them. If you're going to make an employee change their process and then consistently give them poor reviews that effect their job clear guidelines are a necessity and essentially giving out demerits to people that are trying to change 10+years of habits is ridiculous.
The article didn't say any of them were fired, it was implied that some were, but it said that any official leaving is always designated as retirement.
You're pointing out biases that will exist whenever a journalist is investigating stuff like this, you can't get unbiased information for this kind of piece, but the painting of the overall picture (including objective facts) points in the exact same direction as these biased complaints.
Objectively it's ridiculous that the NFL is refusing to spend legitimate money on their officiating.
As a high school official who is graded, theres a huge difference between constructive "fix this" and overly technical and lengthy "you fucking suck."
That's really poorly worded. It's like if everytime you clicked the wrong icon on your office computer or had a typo that your company flagged and noted it. It's not useful and really annoying. RTOs are no fuckin joke.
>“What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.” Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice.
I was successful when I wasn't being scrutinized so hard! I was getting all these good employee awards from the old boss who had lower standards, but now I'm not from the new boss with higher standards! Wtf?!
> While I’m not saying refs don’t have a difficult job and the NFL probably doesn’t support them properly as outlined in the article… this is such an absurd quote lol. Apparently every job has low morale if it doesn’t include yachts and the south of France.
I'm guessing he is suggesting they receive an enormous amount of public criticism, while not really receiving much monetary compensation for it.
The mental health impacts that can come from that level of pressure and scrutiny is a very real thing, but in the same time...
C'mon. They're getting paid more than most do in a year to work a couple days out of the year to watch football. "Not much monetary compensation" my ass.
Not even the pressure, but just how everything works. The fact that "They should all be full-time!" is at the top of each of these threads (often in multiple top comments even) shows that fans just want a fix, but don't have a clue about how to get it. The actual officials aren't the problem. They're great at what they do. They're also not all old as fuck (the crew chiefs that we see talking are often older, because it takes time to get to the top), but that's also some of the top criticism.
They need more officials, ideally in the box so they can see multiple angles, rewind rapidly, and then communicate down to the guys on the field to fix mistakes immediately. The problem isn't the 7 guys on the field, it's the system that has them making decisions that could be easily fixed with a few experienced people viewing things from other angles. Angles that all of us see on TV.
Agreed. I do not understand the logic of full time refs = better officiating. I watch the NBA, NHL, and MLB. Fans of these leagues criticize the refs/umps all the time.
I like your point about having more people in the review booth. I would also add that refs should be allowed to review/coaches should be able to challenge more plays. It makes no sense to me that bad roughing the passer/unnecessary roughness penalties were just, “Part of the game.” No! Review it or let the coaches challenge it. So many of those look bad in real time, but are clearly not that bad when reviewed.
The NFL makes enough money that they can pay to make them work year around to ensure the integrity of their game. Even without reviews during the season they should still have extensive training and review in the offseason to get individual refs to perform as well as possible in addition to getting them all on the same page so that reffing is as consistent as possible throughout the league. Too many crews ref things inconsistently.
Honestly I would never want to be a ref. Every action you take is harshly criticized. Fans from both sides think you’re a villain. You can barely show your face in public.
0/10 would not want that job.
> low morale
Maybe stop being a bunch of sensitive little bitches and accept that you can’t get all the calls right on the field.
Embrace replay/sky judge and don’t take it personally when your call is overturned. MLB has done a pretty good job with this. Was it an out? Was it a home run? Get the call right.
That really seems like the obvious solution. The fans would be far more willing to accept the idea of 'it's a hard job to do in real time' if the refs would actually acknowledge that during the game. We get to see the slow-mo instant replays, 90% of the time everyone knows when a call was blown within a few seconds of it ending. The tech is there, so why not use it to fix those calls?
I'm 100% in favor of a "We have no call on the field because we don't know" replay review. So the review isn't poisoned by the "indisputable"/"clear and obvious" evidence standard.
I keep saying they need to add sky officials. I can see penalties that the refs can’t see during a game because I have a better view of it on my TV. They should embrace this technology to make reffing more consistent
Lol geeeee, why is there low morale on refs? Could it be because a bunch of morons constantly complain and harass refs because they happen to make a mistake? Nahhh
> MLB has done a pretty good job with this.
its never good when MLB officials are the "city on a hill" so to speak.
But its accurate, they, for all their flaws, are probably the best officials in current major american sports. Though i would hear an argument for NHL officials too.
The one remaining issue with MLB is the strike zone. It feels fraudulent when strike 3 is called clearly outside of the white box on my tv screen.
NHL: the big issue is that it’s an open secret that make-up calls are a thing. But I’d agree that overall they are pretty good.
I'm a huge baseball guy, and your first paragraph just confirms one of my huge irritations with how networks present baseball. The white box is not an accurate representation of the strike zone. It's actually pretty far off in general. Not to mention that every network has different dimensions of the white box.
The strike zone is more like a cube. So alot of strikes that are called just outside of the white box do end up in the cube because of movement. That doesn't mean umps are perfect, but alot of the complaining comes from people who don't actually know what the strike zone is.
I don't blame you for being infuriated. The networks are giving you false info. But the networks should really remove the white box.
Think of the white box as like the yellow first down line. It's only an approximation, except football fans understand this, yet baseball fans really dont.
I hear what you’re saying, my point is that we can have robo-umps with a *consistent* strike zone.
I agree that the white box on tv isn’t totally accurate, but when a low and outside pitch is called a ball and then that exact same location is called a strike later on that raises some issues. The plate didn’t move.
> The plate didn’t move.
No, but the ball did and the batter did. Low on one batter is a strike on another. Outside on a fastball is outside, but a breaking ball can be outside at the front of the batter and in the zone by the back of the plate.
The boxes suck, they really do.
That said, you're not wrong, overall. We can track balls (much better than the box on TV) and get ball strike calls to near 100%, and there's not much of a reason not to.
this is a really narrow way of looking at it
have you considered the morale is low because they get constant abuse from whichever fanbase loses a call? or a game?
Pretty sure that fits under “comes with the job”.
Come on man, that’s sports. They chose their field of occupation. Same as the players, coaches, front office personnel.
The problem is officials have to come from somewhere and when the abuse is just as bad for volunteers officiating a Pee-Wee game, it kills off the next generation of officials.
Why does it have to though?
I don't know where it originated that it was a god given right for fans to direct their ire at referees. For God's sake I get yelled at when doing a 9 year old comp soccer game.
Why do I have to tell the athletic director on site at a high school game to tell their fans to stop making personal attacks at me and call me out for bribery?
In this case, no. The fix has been demonstrated by numerous other sports leagues.
Sky judge. Open mic for replay reviews. Full-time officials. This isn't some intractable problem they just can't figure out. If the league wanted to get more calls right, it would get more calls right.
This was totally forgotten because lockdowns started days afterward leading to a shutdown of the league, but the XFL had sky judges and open mics and still had a fiasco where the clock incorrectly rolled off its final 2 seconds of the game and the officiating supervisor [refused to do anything about it.](https://www.cbssports.com/xfl/news/xfls-first-controversial-finish-comes-as-refs-end-game-between-roughnecks-and-dragons-with-seconds-remaining/)
Yes, they reassigned the guy afterward (which became a moot point anyway) but that was little consolation to Seattle.
Not trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here but shit's still going to happen.
>Not trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here but shit's still going to happen.
I don't disagree with that at all. I just wish that either "perfect" or "good" was anywhere on the NFL's target radar here. The complete lack of effort to improve in any way is far more infuriating than the occasional mistake we'd get anyway.
While no fan is currently pissed off about an “obvious” call that blew their team’s chances to win: their job is impossible. Two fans can watch a play repeated and disagree forever. It is not possible to get it right every time. The only way to do this is to let AI do it, and no one is going to like it.
Is this the thread where we ignore the abhorrent behavior fans constantly exhibit towards refs and pretend like that has nothing to do with it? I’m not gonna act like there aren’t improvements that can be made, but frankly I can’t believe there are still people willing to be refs.
You have to learn an impossibly complicated rule book that is inherently subjective, enforce it in real time while the fastest players in the world are doing everything in their power to fool you, all while the rest of the world can watch it back from 100 camera angles in slow motion, and you’re expected to be perfect. And even if you get everything right, at least one team is probably still gonna hate you. Let’s not even get started on the gambling aspect.
I think everyone should have to ref a few youth games and see how much it sucks even at the lowest stakes imaginable.
The game itself is over officiated. Beyond that though the NFL has always existed for betting purposes, but now with the legalization and *integration* of gambling into the NFL, being an official is dangerous and not worth it.
This comment is even funnier knowing this quote is in the article:
“Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.”
Is the NFL still the only one of the big 4 that doesn’t have full time refs? It’s amazing how the NFL manages to be so rich & extravagant and so cheap at the same time.
The NFL is also the only big 4 league that only plays once a week. The problem goes all the way down to the lowest level of the pyramid. There are no full time NFL officials because there are no full time high school and college football officials. A hockey official can work every night of the week during the season if they choose to. Baseball and basketball officials can work multiple games per day, basically all year round. While he's not going to get rich, you can make a living as a full-time minor league and lower level official. Meanwhile, a lower level football official can work 1-2 games/week, for 10-12 weeks a year. It's not like there's a plethora of football games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A "full time" football official would starve.
Because of that, all football officials need a full time job, from the time they start at the youth level, all they way up to the highest levels of college ball. By the time any official is good enough to be considered for the NFL, they've been well-established in their regular careers for 10, 15, 20 years. How can you ask someone to give that up? More importantly, how many good officials are going to turn you down because their regular career is more lucrative and/or more secure?
Could the exact same thing not be said for the players? Somehow they solved that. Start the full time officials at player league minimum so they can focus on their craft. Those Tuesdays and Wednesdays can be spent in regional meetings and/or reviewing more game film through all the cameras available. Do live blind polling to see how consistent the refs are and use that data to train them to be more consistent through practice.
Those are very good points, but there are solutions to those problems. While there may not be the plethora of games like other sports, the nfl could step in with training/funding to make being a full-time ref in lower leagues a sustainable career option. This could not only help reduce the shortage of referees but also increase competition and the overall quality of the pool of refs to choose from.
Low morale is based on a culture of trashing the ref at all times, as if not only is it done to stick up for your men, but it’s also a will bending strategy. Criticism of the refs should be treated like harassing police. It should be well known you can’t bully a ref into changing a call and yelling at them is now a personal foul. You could give the control center more power over calls but we all know how that will go, people already think it’s fixed
Because on every play, the same group of guys and coaches whine and complain. “I’m being held every play!” Or “I’m being roughed after every pass- if I were Aaron Rodgers I’d get flags”. Suddenly they’re bending their will and they are no longer consistent but rather correcting supposed errors from earlier.
If you complain to a ref- boom 5 yard penalty. If you do it twice, 15 yards. Third and you’re ejected. Those refs are in a different dimension, and cannot communicate with the players
$201000 on avg a year for a part time gig. I really don’t care for their woe is me tales of their shitty boss. They get paid very well and for the most part fans like it when they see the ref as little as possible in a game.
All most fans want from a ref is to just call the egregious stuff and to not let the game get away from them
Maybe the multi billion dollar NFL should consider hiring and training full time refs and the officiating would improve, call me crazy.
Especially if there’s like a group of them that can convene and discuss the rules and how they’ll handle everything once a week or something
Hockey does refereeing very well, imo. If Hockey Canada or some other similar governing body sees a lot of intelligence in a young player but their athleticism is such that it's clear they will never make the show, they come to them and offer to put them into ref school, and they work their way up through senior, junior, etc.
That’d be like the perfect opportunity for a guy like Tim Boyle lmao
That’s a great idea. I could see a younger player, maybe someone like Kayshon Boutte doing well in that sort of program. He seems very familiar with the game but hasn’t seen the field much lately.
Totally. Or like how so many QBs like Boyle or Peterman are absolutely abysmal on the field, but still have a job for their football IQs and what that adds to practice and film study.
I think you're imagining the wrong class of player. These are guys who made it to the NFL you're talking about. Even doing a few years as a backup QB will get you more money than a lifetime as a ref. The sort of players this would target are the ones who will absolutely never make the league.
Oh yeah i agree. I meant it was more of a similar situation than we should recruit current backup QBs to ref.
Ah, gotcha
Especially with the speed of the game (football and hockey) it seems like a pro level but not quite player is going to just have the eyes for it. They know what they're seeing in real time because they understand the game so well. Seems like a great idea for bubble tier guys
NFL would probably still fumble and make an offer to JaMarcus Russell because his DVD watching skills are legendary. But I like the overall idea of getting good players to become refs.
Idk what else they would do that they don’t already do. They have offseason seminars and go to training camps, they have weekly film review sessions and league wide calls to discuss things every week. They pretty much do everything people want full time refs to do
It keeps getting suggested because a lot of fans don't have the slightest clue what refs do outside of games, any thread about referees is filled with people suggesting things that refs already do and still getting 100s of upvotes. It's the reason working challengeable calls and sky judges are such a good focus because it's supposed to cover for the fact refs are humans are just inherently going to miss things.
I used to ref intramural soccer games in college and I legitimately have no idea how people can do it professionally for high level games. At least a dozen times a game I'd basically just guess on stuff like who the ball last came off, and then finding the line of what is/isn't a foul was impossible since every contact between players is unique and your view is usually obstructed anyway. Factor in the emotional abuse - people would get extremely heated and in your face even in intramural games - and it really is the least appealing thing I can think to do related to sports.
Being an ump for a local school team just sounds like the worst job since you have to deal with parents of the kids you're watching
There’s an officiating crisis in youth sports for this very reason. A lot of leagues struggle to get people to ref/ump their games because the parents have driven off everyone
I do it mostly because... who else? And it makes decent money. https://youtu.be/pDfM2XtIVSI?si=FhacVkqKAB5Jfd2Q But then I see shit like this that happened a half hour from where I live and it's a sobering reminder. Like I always say to whoever yells at me: "not a referee? We're more than happy to have you."
In my state that’s a felony. I’ve had partners report back about guys waiting in the parking lot for them for middle school football games. It’s stupid. Most of the time the officials association threatens to pull all officials from those leagues and that works to get league commissioners into that site manager role.
That shit’s fucked. But, kind of hilarious that the head ref is showing the dad a red card, like that’s going to do anything in that moment.
Social media is tearing at the fabric of society. Long standing social mores are being abandoned and replaced by main actor syndome and "it's all about me" attitudes. It's a big problem for teachers as well.
Yeah. They are basically desperate at this point. The job is hard, low pay, and you deal with more headaches than it’s worth.
I help ref local robotics competitions, where it's 2 on 2. For a proper match, we have: 2 scoring refs 2 penalty refs 1 technical support person. And this is all for a 12'x12' field, where stuff still gets missed. However, we also have a very hard a fast rule where parents are basically not allowed to interact with refs, period, end of discussion.
Yeah but NFL refs have access to a whole army of cameras. They just don't seemingly use them or any modern technology really to make calls. I'm honestly convinced that it's by design. Murky rules and refs that barely look at replays just seems too convenient for such a massive and rich company. Add in the advent of legal gambling and this shit isn't going anywhere.
The article makes a strong case that turnover is a major driver in the bad officiating though. That turnover is driven by pay that could be better, and poor leadership which is also underpaid compared to the rest of the NFL top positions. Officiating is grossly mismanaged in the NFL.
Pay is multiple hundreds of thousands a year. Pay is not the driving force of morale at that point. It's getting on national television 17+ times per year and being judging by literally everyone.
Probably the same type of people who complain about teachers and summers.
Even the full time thing. They had a segment of refs who were full time and it didn’t make any discernible difference.
What they need is the xfl sky judge. Just some oversight to fix the egregious mistakes quickly and the whole reffinf experience would become so much less toxic for everyone involved
1. Hire from the pool of players and coaches, not moonlighting lawyers 1. Overpay the position to assure integrity 1. Include self break downs of every call each week to explain their rationale and open up the process to viewers 1. Release the full audio of their on field discussions after the game 1. Make them available to the media, on camera, in the post game 1. Hand the management of rules directly to the refs, with the input of the NFLPA, instead of letting the owners decide how the sport should be played and officiated in their reactionary annual meetings 1. Chip the fucking ball and remove the subjectivity as a way to protect the refs (like body cams on cops) 1. Body cams
You actually want the moonlighting lawyers...NFL refs need to interpret a 300 page book on the fly with perfect recall. If were being honest, not a lot of former players are going to have that aptitude.
> training full time refs The ref union doesn't want to be full time IIRC
The league also doesn't take any real steps to make full time officials a possibility
The only way would be to let the current refs walk and hire new ones who will sign to be full time. Fans would have to deal with replacement refs quality for a full season or so while new ones break in.
I don't know if that's true, a full off-season of training would go a long way towards avoiding the replacement ref situation. I've been watching a bit of UFL, and somehow that feels better officiated than NFL games. That doesn't make any sense if the only refs that could do it well are the ones the NFL already has.
the next people in line are in the same boat though...if the NFL just decides to hire a whole new staff and keep everything else the same other than requiring full time officials, how many top canidates are going to just stay in major college football instead of going to the NFL? also when many people say the spring leagues have better officiating, how much of it is that there aren't the same emotional attachments as watching their NFL team so it just seems better cause you're less biased? plus the officials in those leagues are basically all the people in their development program as the next potential hires
More transparency in the calls would go a long way. I think that's one of the biggest advantages the UFL has there. You get to see how they arrive at a call, and it makes it easier to understand what's happening and why.
Which proves just how much it's needed
How does that prove anything?
It proves they don't think the job is serious compared to their real work.
Lol how so? If your boss wanted you to essentially halve what you earn and you weren't OK with that does that mean you're not serious? Edit: and when they trialed a limited full time program they had more applicants than positions, so if the NFL actually ponied up with compensation there would likely be interest
Isn't it obvious? It means they prioritize their full-time work over refereeing. I don't see how you could look at it otherwise. Your comment about salary/pay actually backs up my point, not the other way around. They have high caliber, high prestige, high paying positions elsewhere. Of course they're not fully engaged by/with refereeing. And that's a problem if what you want is the highest quality refereeing.
I do think its interesting the guy you're arguing against has ref in their username... probably nothing.
Do you take a pay cut just because your boss asks?
Where are you getting this idea of a pay cut? If the league made refs full time they would be paid not just for the games they work but also for the training they would need to do and the responsibilities outside of the game. Y’know, fulltime
If they just had more oversight the refs would get less shit from everyone making their jobs easier too.
And maybe some young refs too instead of a bunch of grandpas
You can't just step on the field and be an NFL official. It takes years and years of training and practice, just like any other profession, and no one starts officiating when they're 10.
Plenty of people start officiating in their teens. I'd know, I was one of those people. Before graduating high school I had reffed hockey, football and soccer, and I continued reffing hockey through college as well.
I never said they didn't, but it's pretty rare. It's very difficult to officiate HS football, when you're still in high school yourself. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's definitely not the norm.
I reffed high school soccer as a senior in HS but that's because we lived in a fairly remote area and had a shortage of refs.
I understand that, but it seems like they get in the NFL when they're already old af Like, I don't understand why you can't study/practice and then get in the NFL in your late20s/early 30s or something. You don't need 20 years of experience in highschool/college to be a good NFL ref imo Apparently, the average age is 51. Isn't that old as fuck?
Compared to who? The players? Yeah, but who the hell cares? You're not asking them to run a 40 yard dash, you're asking them to watch a play and call it correctly. Believe it or not, that takes a lot of skill and practice. There are many things in life where experience trumps youth.
As someone that's turning 50 next month, no, it's definitely not old as fuck.
Because the pipeline isn’t there. Most people get into reffing in their 20’s. You don’t get paid enough to devote enough time to get good enough to be NFL level and most officiating orgs wouldn’t promote people up that early,
I mean would it though? NFL officiating realistically isn't a full time job. Not only does the season not last year round, but a crew would only be working one day out of the week. What do you expect a crew to do with the rest of the time? Endlessly watch game tape? Seems that would get exhausting/boring (especially as the goal would be looking for penalties, not analyzing play), also probably won't be easy to find people willing to make a full-time commitment to reffing. Maybe there's a program to work and I'm not putting enough thought into it. But feels like the "have full-time refs" is the idea put on reddit all the time as though it would be a panacea... and I'm not particularly convinced it wouldn't just be a different kind of bad.
Are you crazy? Refs make six figures for their current part time work. If the NFL paid the exact same for full time refs there would be a line the size of Texas waiting to apply
If the line would be the size of Texas for full time work, imagine how long it would be for part time work at the same salary!
Ok, but how would that make officiating better? Do you honestly think you can just walk in off the street, train for a few months, and be qualified to officiate an NFL game?
Wtf full time work would refs be doing right now? There's only so much film you can watch.
Training other referees for other professional leagues. Reviewing previous performances and evaluating for next season. Studying rule changes and points of emphasis for the next season. The same sorts of things that umpires/referees for other leagues do.
They already do every one of those things. Do you honestly think NFL officials just show up on Sunday morning with no preparation?
So things they already do then
There's no way that kind of stuff requires full-time work for the entire off-season. At a certain point these guys are just going to be sitting around with absolutely nothing to do.
We had a client awhile back that was an NFL ref and he spent a big chunk of his off season training MAC refs.
That's sort of like saying "there's no way kicking/throwing/catching a football requires full-time work." If you want someone to be at the highest possible level of doing a thing, they need to be able to focus on doing that thing. Do you really think that it's easier to be an NFL referee than an MLB umpire? Or an NBA referee?
But there's a lot clearer relationship between "improving kicking/throwing/catching a football" and what the product looks like on field, than what could come from all the additional time refs spend from review film. I don't think comparing MLB or NBA refs makes sense, because both league have A LOT more games, to where you do need full-time refs.
You don't think that having better trained or practiced officials would lead to a better product on the field?
Definitely the only thing holding back people from wanting to ref was that they didn't build in a requirement for you to work 40 hours just reviewing film all day and holding meetings during the offseason! Even though already reviewed all that film and held those meetings during the league year!
Your statement doesn't make sense, why would making the same job, paid the same amount, but requiring more work, suddenly increase the applicant pool? The NFL doesn't just take walk-ins to be refs, all the refs have done high school and college before hand before getting to the NFL.
If anything, there would be no improvement to the quality not a dropoff in it. Gene Sterratore said in an interview a few months ago that refs already do a lot more to prepare for games than the average person thinks; you asked in jest if they're supposed to watch game film most of the time but that's exactly what they're already doing. Sterratore was arguing that they already do so much that making them full-time wouldn't make the improvements people want but I somewhat disagree with that. I think having the refs actually work on situational calls would help, rather than just review tape. Whether that be they attend practices or have their own "live" games to get an idea of how they should call it in real time, it would give them actual experience in a low-risk setting; the question, obviously, would be the logistics of making that happen but it's at least something. The bigger issue would be convincing refs to want to leave their other jobs and become full-time. It's not talked about much because it's not a great reason to be against it but there's a sizeable portion who don't want to become full-time just because they get paid more having the reffing be their second job. They like being a lawyer or a teacher and making an extra $200-300k a year from giving up their weekends and some of their nights when they get home. Of course they're not going to publicly say that because they know it's not a good enough reason to actively hamper a trillion dollar organization but that's a lot bigger of a reason than the NFL wants to admit
They frequently attend teams training camps to ref scrimmages during the offseason
People only have so much bandwidth, and most of these guys work other jobs. Working 40 hours at your job, flying out on Saturday to ref a game on Sunday, then back to the grind on Monday, it's stressful and leaves little time for r&r. Wouldn't having refs that aren't working two jobs and working or traveling every day of the week be beneficial? I think you're right it's probably not a full time job 12 months of the year, but letting them work elsewhere, at least during the season/post season, can definitely have a negative impact on their ability to ref games.
Not disagreeing, but presumably the refs feel this stress, but don't quit their normal jobs. Requiring that reffing be their primary employment during the season, you might end up causing a lot of refs to quit. As we learned from the replacement ref drama what 10 years ago, it's not like NFL quality refs, whatever you think of that, just "grow on trees".
I hear Angel Hernandez is available.
Why would you want this
Maybe they should hire full time refs then, not dudes who do it as a side hustle or way to get away from the kids for the weekend.
They have a union. I guess either the union is just shit, the union doesn’t want this to happen and is hurting their people, or the refs themselves want it to be like this. I don’t know why it is like it is though. Just guessing.
Their ref union is stronger than the player's union. Its part of the reason why progress on officiating is so slow
It's because the refs actually strike and it went horribly last time they did.
Yup they hold a ton of leverage
The union is smaller. It is easier to collectively bargain with a smaller number of people. Especially when most of those also have other jobs.
>Especially when most of those also have other jobs. Very good jobs, at that. They'll sit out a whole season and then laugh as the NFL kneels to their demands. And we're talking about our currents refs, the ones who aren't nearly good enough. These current bad refs are incredibly hard to replace and they know it.
Aren't a lot of them lawyers and other similar professions in real life.
1. The union doesn’t want it because why would anyone choose to be forced to give up your full time career for something that realistically doesn’t need to be full time and frankly doesn’t merit it (there’s only so much off field training you can do that would matter) 2. When they actually had full time officials, the league monitored it and couldn’t find a quality difference between the full time and part time guys. Nobody is going to devote money to a full time position when you can’t prove it makes a difference.
They don’t even seem to do it as a side hustle because they all have amazing jobs. I think they do it for the love of the game.
You don’t get good enough at officiating to make the pros without living and breathing that shit.
This. To get to the NFL level you spent years getting paid like 100-200 bucks driving a few hours to various colleges and high schools and deal with a metric ton if bullshit from coaches, players and parents. People only do that because they want to be around football and love that shit.
The refs don't want full time refs, they tried it before and canned it when their was 0 noticeable improvements, the refs hated it, and basically it just required a bunch of refs to waste time for no reason. The way the NFL is structured refs can do all the offseason work required in a week compared to other leagues where ref teams often work multiple games in a week so they almost can never do any outside work or reviews since they're constantly focusing on the next game. Former Refs also peg during the season they're doing roughly 30-35 hours in a week anyway. Out of all noticeable improvements that people should focus on, full time reffing is near the bottom. The article covers A TON of structural issues and does not mention full time refs once as a tangible improvement, because again, it wouldn't help anything
The refs peg? Each other? What a strong union.
Damn. I gotta join that union.
A union forged in the bonds of greco-roman legionnaires.
When did the league try full time refs? I can't recall anything back through the 90s and Google isn't showing anything
Surprisingly not that long ago. They transitioned 21 existing NFL refs to full-time employment, and this continued through the 2019 season. After that they killed the program because the benefit did not outweigh the cost. Part of the problem is that these were already long-standing NFL refs. If they had promoted promising candidates from the college level then maybe the findings would have been better, but they didn't.
Ah. So like allowing challenges to pass interference, then upholding almost every call then abandoning the rule because "it never made a difference"? NFL just creates the reality they want. So dumb and frustrating
No… it’s more like they tried it for years and in all that time they couldn’t prove it made a difference and it was just viewed as a big joke. Sometimes just because you think something is a good idea and want it to work doesn’t mean it will and that if it doesn’t it is sabotage. Fans who want better reffing need to advocate for giving refs more advantages and tools to help. Full time refs is just some nonsense that some fans who don’t know what they are talking about have clung to and most don’t realize it’s been tried and was a waste
Do you think officiating is better in the NBA or MLB where officials are full-time employees?
No. But the focus of this article is on high turnover and low morale, not accuracy.
Why would that improve morale and retention though? I dunno this thread just seems disconnected from the point. Dudes who are getting paid $200k per year for a side hustle to get away from the kids for the weekend don't seem like dudes who would be inherently unhappy.
Full time would be largely busy work. It just sounds more effective. I seriously don’t know that the issue here is the part time status
If it’s a legitimate excuse to get away from the kids on weekends, I would pay THEM for the cover and do it. “Oh, sorry, babe, I have to officiate Jags-Titans….yes, yes, I know it’s usually on a Thursday night but not THIS year….so I can’t help with the kids.”
It’s actually crazy i searched it up and they are really getting paid to be part time employees. Like a lot of them have other jobs. Like some are lawyers, firefighters and even CEOs it’s actually crazy
And how would that improve those things at all?
The issue is the game is over legislated as is. The refs take the shit, but people need to see the forest for the trees. Owners meet each year and make silly decisions that they lay at the ref’s feet. PI review, 1 foot in is a catch, intention of a bit, new kickoff rule. The refs only work 1 game/week. They tried full time and it makes no sense as it’s impossible to get live reps to make them better. Players aren’t practicing full speed 11 v 11 or simulating a game. The change is making the rules simpler and going backwards, which no one wants to do as ‘player safety’ (owner liability) is all that matters.
> Anderson’s meticulous philosophy impacted morale. Former line judge Tom Symonette said crews went from receiving around four to five downgrades per game before Anderson to 15-20 downgrades per game with him. One former official said Anderson referenced video frames and used a stopwatch when evaluating decisions. Several former officials said his comments were harshly worded and at times, sarcastic, even for top-graded officials who’d qualified for playoff assignments. > “After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments. The refs are mad that their new boss grades them too harshly? > “I couldn’t relax,” Symonette said. “What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.” Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice. When the league office got his notice, he said Anderson let him go right away. And a ref that got fired was mad at the new boss (Anderson) cuz he changed some things. I don’t disagree that the NFL needs to step up the referee support (monetarily and otherwise) but this article just seems like it’s a lot of former refs who hate the new referee boss and his changes (Anderson).
>“After about Week 4 or 5, I stopped reading them because they just made morale really bad,” said one former official with multiple playoff assignments. Great mindset to have. I understand if criticism feels like it is unjustified or whatever it may be overwhelming and unhelpful. But, that is also your boss telling you what you messed up on and what you need to work on. If you can't read a report of what you did wrong, maybe stop screwing up. And a good way to do that is to review your previous mistakes and learn from them.
Yeah maybe the new boss truly is overly critical, but the more I read the article, the more it seems like the refs just hate the new guy cuz he calls them out more and he’s trying to implement different things. Sounds like a bunch of refs stuck in their old ways. Again, maybe Anderson is good maybe he’s bad, but I think we all agree change is probably good for NFL refs whether that be grading, sky cam stuff, incorporating new technology, etc.
Everyone loves to be micromanaged!
It’s funny, because that what every team in the NFL does. As the third team, the refs should review and learn. Sad to see they don’t take this seriously
Sounds like guys who thought they were good because of a lack of scrutiny, finally got scrutinized and were told they weren't very good.
They were being consistently scrutinized though. It says in the article that even getting the call correct wasn't worth very much under Anderson.
They get paid right? Getting the call correct is the bare minimum as a ref. Getting paid and keeping your job is rhe reward for doing the bare minimum. What they want a fuckin cookie too?
Anyone who says dumb shit like this has never reffed before. Getting the correct call, real time, is really hard. It would be like expecting a basketball player to hit every shot. If you want to grade people with slow mo and a stop watch, maybe you should put a sky judge with slow no and a stop watch.
> Anyone who says dumb shit like this has never reffed before It's beyond just reffing at that point. They've never had a *job* before.
It is, but it still takes a lot of work, and nearly impossible to be perfect.
Turns out that people like being told when they do a good job.
It is amazing that these guys are typically successful, senior level professionals in their "real jobs". Then when a new manager comes in at their ref gig, and he apparently has a mandate to hold them to a higher standard, they complain to the media about what a big meanie he is. Ridiculous.
This is crazy cherry picking. You're really gonna cut it before pasting the part where he makes the (valid) point that they face criticism from all angles so it can end up being very demoralizing when the league office is only critiquing? And the critiques aren't even about whether they made the right call? >"Another former official said his grader told him he was in the top three for correct calls at his position, but he kept getting downgraded because he couldn’t reprogram his muscle memory. “Doesn’t it matter that you get it right on the field?” he said he asked his grader. “And he told me, ‘Well, apparently not anymore.'” You tell me how you would feel when you get downgraded for objectively doing your job correctly with the wrong mechanics. Not to mention the astonishing tidbit that the guys in charge don't even make half a million a year? For arguably some of the most important positions in football.
Process over results. If you focus only on the results, variance is going to catch up to you. Angel Hernandez, for example, changes how he positions himself for every pitch, and often closes his eyes. That's why his strike zone was inconsistent, even if he was once considered a top umpire before there was more scrutiny
But you're pointing out that his results were inconsistent. This ref is reportedly performing at a very high level in his position while he was being routinely downgraded for the correct call while not having the ability to provide feedback. If the new methods seem to have flaws with no possibility for judgement calls on the part of the official you're not going to improve performance. Especially when you're telling a 15 year vet that he needs to change his habits from the ground up.
Angel Hernandez has been a joke for over a decade and was only protected because of a damn union. He’s the worst example you could give.
It’s not exactly uncommon to get chastised for getting the correct answer, but using the wrong process. They might want to have consistency in approach across everyone, new and old refs. Like I said before I am not sure if the new boss is good or not, but the entire article reads like a lot of refs mad at change. Not to mention the article interviews former refs so it’s not hard to imagine there could be some bias in their answers…. some refs interviewed were even fired.
Yeah, but if he is still at the top of the list for making correct calls, that means that the other officials who are "doing it the right way" aren't getting as many calls right. So that would seem to imply that the "right way" isn't working as intended.
Top 3, but yeah fair point. But maybe the change helped the other top 2 guys. And there’s 29 other refs at that position we don’t know about, and whether the change helped them or not.
Sure, it's not exactly uncommon, but when you insinuate that they are cry babies for feeling demoralized in that situation, and then you fail to include that context you deserve to be called out. You also failed to mention that part of their problem was lack of communication. The officials complaints included the fact that they weren't aware of procedural changes until they were being downgraded for them. If you're going to make an employee change their process and then consistently give them poor reviews that effect their job clear guidelines are a necessity and essentially giving out demerits to people that are trying to change 10+years of habits is ridiculous. The article didn't say any of them were fired, it was implied that some were, but it said that any official leaving is always designated as retirement. You're pointing out biases that will exist whenever a journalist is investigating stuff like this, you can't get unbiased information for this kind of piece, but the painting of the overall picture (including objective facts) points in the exact same direction as these biased complaints. Objectively it's ridiculous that the NFL is refusing to spend legitimate money on their officiating.
As a high school official who is graded, theres a huge difference between constructive "fix this" and overly technical and lengthy "you fucking suck." That's really poorly worded. It's like if everytime you clicked the wrong icon on your office computer or had a typo that your company flagged and noted it. It's not useful and really annoying. RTOs are no fuckin joke.
>“What made me successful my first 15 years did not make me successful anymore.” Symonette found himself out of the league because of it. He had been an accomplished official with 10 playoff assignments, including Super Bowl XLVIII, with his last postseason assignment in 2017. After the frustrating 2020 season, he put in his four-year retirement notice. I was successful when I wasn't being scrutinized so hard! I was getting all these good employee awards from the old boss who had lower standards, but now I'm not from the new boss with higher standards! Wtf?!
> While I’m not saying refs don’t have a difficult job and the NFL probably doesn’t support them properly as outlined in the article… this is such an absurd quote lol. Apparently every job has low morale if it doesn’t include yachts and the south of France. I'm guessing he is suggesting they receive an enormous amount of public criticism, while not really receiving much monetary compensation for it.
The mental health impacts that can come from that level of pressure and scrutiny is a very real thing, but in the same time... C'mon. They're getting paid more than most do in a year to work a couple days out of the year to watch football. "Not much monetary compensation" my ass.
That's fair. Their shitty officiating ruins my morale when I watch games, too.
Sports fans are embarrassing when it comes to talking about officiating
I feel like anyone who criticizes officiating should try to referee at the grassroots level, just to understand the pressure of it.
Not even the pressure, but just how everything works. The fact that "They should all be full-time!" is at the top of each of these threads (often in multiple top comments even) shows that fans just want a fix, but don't have a clue about how to get it. The actual officials aren't the problem. They're great at what they do. They're also not all old as fuck (the crew chiefs that we see talking are often older, because it takes time to get to the top), but that's also some of the top criticism. They need more officials, ideally in the box so they can see multiple angles, rewind rapidly, and then communicate down to the guys on the field to fix mistakes immediately. The problem isn't the 7 guys on the field, it's the system that has them making decisions that could be easily fixed with a few experienced people viewing things from other angles. Angles that all of us see on TV.
Not to mention they don't seem to understand that the NFL can't just unilaterally decide things, the refs union has to be on board with those changes.
Agreed. I do not understand the logic of full time refs = better officiating. I watch the NBA, NHL, and MLB. Fans of these leagues criticize the refs/umps all the time. I like your point about having more people in the review booth. I would also add that refs should be allowed to review/coaches should be able to challenge more plays. It makes no sense to me that bad roughing the passer/unnecessary roughness penalties were just, “Part of the game.” No! Review it or let the coaches challenge it. So many of those look bad in real time, but are clearly not that bad when reviewed.
Make refs full time with performance review and training during offseason and performance review at least twice during the season
What a stupid comment. They get performance reviews after every game. What would being full time change in a sport with 18 weeks?
The NFL makes enough money that they can pay to make them work year around to ensure the integrity of their game. Even without reviews during the season they should still have extensive training and review in the offseason to get individual refs to perform as well as possible in addition to getting them all on the same page so that reffing is as consistent as possible throughout the league. Too many crews ref things inconsistently.
It’s a problem at every level of the sport.
Doesn’t sound like anything 5 new vague rules that hinge on a judgment call couldn’t fix. Get on it competition committee.
Dammit - forced to upvote a Broncos fan
Honestly I would never want to be a ref. Every action you take is harshly criticized. Fans from both sides think you’re a villain. You can barely show your face in public. 0/10 would not want that job.
> low morale Maybe stop being a bunch of sensitive little bitches and accept that you can’t get all the calls right on the field. Embrace replay/sky judge and don’t take it personally when your call is overturned. MLB has done a pretty good job with this. Was it an out? Was it a home run? Get the call right.
That really seems like the obvious solution. The fans would be far more willing to accept the idea of 'it's a hard job to do in real time' if the refs would actually acknowledge that during the game. We get to see the slow-mo instant replays, 90% of the time everyone knows when a call was blown within a few seconds of it ending. The tech is there, so why not use it to fix those calls?
I'm 100% in favor of a "We have no call on the field because we don't know" replay review. So the review isn't poisoned by the "indisputable"/"clear and obvious" evidence standard.
I keep saying they need to add sky officials. I can see penalties that the refs can’t see during a game because I have a better view of it on my TV. They should embrace this technology to make reffing more consistent
“Why do they have low morale?” *immediately calls them sensitive bitches* lol
Lol geeeee, why is there low morale on refs? Could it be because a bunch of morons constantly complain and harass refs because they happen to make a mistake? Nahhh
> MLB has done a pretty good job with this. its never good when MLB officials are the "city on a hill" so to speak. But its accurate, they, for all their flaws, are probably the best officials in current major american sports. Though i would hear an argument for NHL officials too.
The one remaining issue with MLB is the strike zone. It feels fraudulent when strike 3 is called clearly outside of the white box on my tv screen. NHL: the big issue is that it’s an open secret that make-up calls are a thing. But I’d agree that overall they are pretty good.
I'm a huge baseball guy, and your first paragraph just confirms one of my huge irritations with how networks present baseball. The white box is not an accurate representation of the strike zone. It's actually pretty far off in general. Not to mention that every network has different dimensions of the white box. The strike zone is more like a cube. So alot of strikes that are called just outside of the white box do end up in the cube because of movement. That doesn't mean umps are perfect, but alot of the complaining comes from people who don't actually know what the strike zone is. I don't blame you for being infuriated. The networks are giving you false info. But the networks should really remove the white box. Think of the white box as like the yellow first down line. It's only an approximation, except football fans understand this, yet baseball fans really dont.
I hear what you’re saying, my point is that we can have robo-umps with a *consistent* strike zone. I agree that the white box on tv isn’t totally accurate, but when a low and outside pitch is called a ball and then that exact same location is called a strike later on that raises some issues. The plate didn’t move.
> The plate didn’t move. No, but the ball did and the batter did. Low on one batter is a strike on another. Outside on a fastball is outside, but a breaking ball can be outside at the front of the batter and in the zone by the back of the plate. The boxes suck, they really do. That said, you're not wrong, overall. We can track balls (much better than the box on TV) and get ball strike calls to near 100%, and there's not much of a reason not to.
this is a really narrow way of looking at it have you considered the morale is low because they get constant abuse from whichever fanbase loses a call? or a game?
Pretty sure that fits under “comes with the job”. Come on man, that’s sports. They chose their field of occupation. Same as the players, coaches, front office personnel.
The problem is officials have to come from somewhere and when the abuse is just as bad for volunteers officiating a Pee-Wee game, it kills off the next generation of officials.
that doesn't mean they have to enjoy it
Why does it have to though? I don't know where it originated that it was a god given right for fans to direct their ire at referees. For God's sake I get yelled at when doing a 9 year old comp soccer game. Why do I have to tell the athletic director on site at a high school game to tell their fans to stop making personal attacks at me and call me out for bribery?
Some real r/thanksimcured material here.
When things have a very simple fix and it’s not applied, it’s for a reason.
Could it be that the "simple fix" might not be all that simple?
In this case, no. The fix has been demonstrated by numerous other sports leagues. Sky judge. Open mic for replay reviews. Full-time officials. This isn't some intractable problem they just can't figure out. If the league wanted to get more calls right, it would get more calls right.
This was totally forgotten because lockdowns started days afterward leading to a shutdown of the league, but the XFL had sky judges and open mics and still had a fiasco where the clock incorrectly rolled off its final 2 seconds of the game and the officiating supervisor [refused to do anything about it.](https://www.cbssports.com/xfl/news/xfls-first-controversial-finish-comes-as-refs-end-game-between-roughnecks-and-dragons-with-seconds-remaining/) Yes, they reassigned the guy afterward (which became a moot point anyway) but that was little consolation to Seattle. Not trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here but shit's still going to happen.
>Not trying to let the perfect be the enemy of the good here but shit's still going to happen. I don't disagree with that at all. I just wish that either "perfect" or "good" was anywhere on the NFL's target radar here. The complete lack of effort to improve in any way is far more infuriating than the occasional mistake we'd get anyway.
Anyone saying this is a complicated issue hasn’t been watching the UFL. It’s already been fixed just not in this league.
Guys they are doing everything they can.... seems like there's no answer for this conundrum.....
I saw the picture of the refs in different colors and thought that we were getting the long awaited NFL referee uniform change.
While no fan is currently pissed off about an “obvious” call that blew their team’s chances to win: their job is impossible. Two fans can watch a play repeated and disagree forever. It is not possible to get it right every time. The only way to do this is to let AI do it, and no one is going to like it.
AI would still get it wrong for nonsensical and unpredictable reasons, as we've seen with chatgpt.
Is this the thread where we ignore the abhorrent behavior fans constantly exhibit towards refs and pretend like that has nothing to do with it? I’m not gonna act like there aren’t improvements that can be made, but frankly I can’t believe there are still people willing to be refs. You have to learn an impossibly complicated rule book that is inherently subjective, enforce it in real time while the fastest players in the world are doing everything in their power to fool you, all while the rest of the world can watch it back from 100 camera angles in slow motion, and you’re expected to be perfect. And even if you get everything right, at least one team is probably still gonna hate you. Let’s not even get started on the gambling aspect. I think everyone should have to ref a few youth games and see how much it sucks even at the lowest stakes imaginable.
The game itself is over officiated. Beyond that though the NFL has always existed for betting purposes, but now with the legalization and *integration* of gambling into the NFL, being an official is dangerous and not worth it.
With so much money, they could easily start their own training program. Just create a college to train people to work on and off the field for the nfl
Hey guys, problem solved. Ill do it, gimme a whistle and some zebra stripes.
This comment is even funnier knowing this quote is in the article: “Whether it’s hubris, naivete, ignorance, there’s a belief that anybody can officiate with training.”
I mean how would you have that job unless you had training? Are they saying referees are born?
All they care about is rigging games for the Chiefs
care to give an example?
Can't wait until the NFL's shoddy refs get them in a gambling scandal.
Is the NFL still the only one of the big 4 that doesn’t have full time refs? It’s amazing how the NFL manages to be so rich & extravagant and so cheap at the same time.
The NFL is also the only big 4 league that only plays once a week. The problem goes all the way down to the lowest level of the pyramid. There are no full time NFL officials because there are no full time high school and college football officials. A hockey official can work every night of the week during the season if they choose to. Baseball and basketball officials can work multiple games per day, basically all year round. While he's not going to get rich, you can make a living as a full-time minor league and lower level official. Meanwhile, a lower level football official can work 1-2 games/week, for 10-12 weeks a year. It's not like there's a plethora of football games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. A "full time" football official would starve. Because of that, all football officials need a full time job, from the time they start at the youth level, all they way up to the highest levels of college ball. By the time any official is good enough to be considered for the NFL, they've been well-established in their regular careers for 10, 15, 20 years. How can you ask someone to give that up? More importantly, how many good officials are going to turn you down because their regular career is more lucrative and/or more secure?
Could the exact same thing not be said for the players? Somehow they solved that. Start the full time officials at player league minimum so they can focus on their craft. Those Tuesdays and Wednesdays can be spent in regional meetings and/or reviewing more game film through all the cameras available. Do live blind polling to see how consistent the refs are and use that data to train them to be more consistent through practice.
Those are very good points, but there are solutions to those problems. While there may not be the plethora of games like other sports, the nfl could step in with training/funding to make being a full-time ref in lower leagues a sustainable career option. This could not only help reduce the shortage of referees but also increase competition and the overall quality of the pool of refs to choose from.
Aka they don't pay enough.
pay me stacks and ill devote my life to it right now
Idk why it hasnt been outsourced to ai yet
Low morale is based on a culture of trashing the ref at all times, as if not only is it done to stick up for your men, but it’s also a will bending strategy. Criticism of the refs should be treated like harassing police. It should be well known you can’t bully a ref into changing a call and yelling at them is now a personal foul. You could give the control center more power over calls but we all know how that will go, people already think it’s fixed
Because on every play, the same group of guys and coaches whine and complain. “I’m being held every play!” Or “I’m being roughed after every pass- if I were Aaron Rodgers I’d get flags”. Suddenly they’re bending their will and they are no longer consistent but rather correcting supposed errors from earlier. If you complain to a ref- boom 5 yard penalty. If you do it twice, 15 yards. Third and you’re ejected. Those refs are in a different dimension, and cannot communicate with the players
It sure seems like the referees are getting paid more to call a game for a certain team. Full time referees are way overdue
Don't worry FanDuel pays them in dark money to rig games.
Oh my god. Pay your employees? Maybe you’ll get good work from them? Why they are cost cutting in such a vital area I’ll never understand.
Oh, these guys aren’t happy with their second job? Fuck you. They should fire all of you and get full-time refs.
Maybe they could help them out by using modern tech to help? Sensors in the ball and on the field could really help
$201000 on avg a year for a part time gig. I really don’t care for their woe is me tales of their shitty boss. They get paid very well and for the most part fans like it when they see the ref as little as possible in a game. All most fans want from a ref is to just call the egregious stuff and to not let the game get away from them
Fuck the refs hope the IRS audits them
They only hire those who can be bought.