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NFL officiating has been a problem for years. The NFL continues to be in denial about it.
The problem is money. As former V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino told #PFTPM several years ago, the league doesn’t properly value the job he held. It’s a tactful way of saying the league is cheap.
And if the league is cheap when it comes to the person who runs officiating, it’s fair to conclude the league is cheap when it comes to the rest of officiating.
Why aren’t officials full-time employees? Because the league would have to pay them a lot more than they’re currently paid. Period.
It’s a thankless job. The gratitude comes from the revenue. The Commissioner gets paid as much as he does in part because he’s a pincushion for the oligarchs lurking behind the curtain. During football season, the officials become targets for scrutiny, too. Paying them more money would make it easier to keep their heads down and their mouths shut as their names are dragged through the muck and the mud of anti-social media, and beyond.
As a result, there’s nothing about a recent item from Kalyn Kahler of TheAthletic.com that is or should be surprising. It’s great information, a revealing look at how cheapness impacts the folks doing the work. But it’s a symptom, not the disease.
The disease is greed, plain and simple. The NFL — which 12 years ago loudly insisted that replacement officials would do the job just as well as locked-out officials who dared to ask for more — doesn’t see the connection between paying more money for officiating and getting tangible value in return.
It’s the same mindset that has caused them to strip NFL Network down to old games and Zoom-based shows that don’t require the expenses of a studio. Massive revenues don’t matter. Pennies are being pinched wherever and however they can be.
The NFL currently is dangling the shiny object of a long-overdue (but still far too tentative) embrace of technology to distract from the problems with officiating. That’s how the Commissioner…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/low-morale-confusion-among-officials-151744768.html
Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-09 15:17:44
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