NFL Zebra Problem...

[profootballtalk.nbcsports.com]

NFL Zebra Problem

The last time the NFL’s contract with officials was up for negotiation, in 2012, you might remember some of the debacle calls for the first three weeks of the NFL season, when replacement officials were often derided for some lousy calls. The next contract couldn’t come at a worse time for the league. The league’s agreement with the officials union expires next March, so this is the last year—and a very big one—for this contract. But the expiration of the deal could force the NFL to do something it should have done before the current referee problems reared its head in the past 14 months: consider making all referees full-time officials, and compensating them with richer, multi-year deals to compete with the TV networks hiring them away from the league.

Last week, NFL referee John Parry retired to take a job at ESPN, which, by the way, is cycling through former NFL refs for studio and Monday night game work at an alarming pace. (2017: Gerry Austin; 2018: Jeff Triplette; 2019: Parry.)

There are 17 referees in the NFL, heading 17 officiating crews. And the turnover among the officials is alarming:

• In the last 13 months, seven of the league’s 17 refs have walked away. Last year, four refs (Ed Hochuli, Terry McAulay, Gene Steratore, Jeff Triplette) retired. This year, three more (Walt Coleman, Pete Morelli, Parry) have stepped down.

• The referees who get the annual Super Bowl assignment are deemed the best in the league over the course of that season. The refs in 10 of the last 16 Super Bowls have left the field. If they’d all aged out, that would be one thing. But the referees in six of those games (McAulay did three Super Bowls, Parry two and Steratore one) all left the game in their fifties, a decade considered to be prime time for refereeing. Traditionally, the retirement age for good officials is somewhere in their mid-sixties.

• Two more referees, Tony Corrente and Walt Anderson, are both over 66, and likely have one or two years remaining on the field.

So if the NFL has to replace eight or nine of 17 refs over three seasons, at a time when officiating is under more scrutiny than ever, now you see why the game is on a very slippery slope entering 2019. The new replay rules covering pass interference calls, which is a good idea all in all, will take significant managing and adjusting. Add that to the menu of demanding calls already, and add the pressurized focus on officials today, and then add seven neophyte referees over two seasons heading crews, and you see the potential for problems in officiating in the coming year or so. Major problems.

Network TV is part of the issue. FOX has taken two respected men, Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino who ran the NFL officiating department for 13 of the last 18 NFL seasons, and made them officiating analysts on TV. ESPN plucked Triplette and Parry off the field in successive years. In 2018, NBC hired McAulay and CBS hired Steratore.

Part of the reason is money. Networks will pay more than the NFL. Examining the estimate of what a 20-year NFL official who has worked his way up to referee can make in a football season, per an NFL source:

Game salaries: $190,000.
Referee stipend (given to each of the 17 referees/crew chiefs): $16,500.
Playoff share (given to all non-rookie officials): $25,000
Off-season pay (NFL camp visits, officiating meetings): $23,100 (rough estimate)
Total NFL pay: $254,600.

(Officials who work post-season games get $14,250 for working the Super Bowl and $8,250 per game for all other playoff games.)

The off-season pay is tricky, because officials get $2,100 per days when at ref clinics run by the league, or when they work NFL mini-camps or training-camp practices. I used 11 days of off-season work as a rough estimate.

So what would happen if the NFL began offering referees three-year, $1.5-million contracts to work full-time for the league? And when I say full-time, I mean officials would still be able to do side jobs away from the NFL, just as long as they devoted the requisite full-time hours to the league job. I think that’s the figure that would begin to make the Steratores and Parrys and McAulays have second thoughts about jumping to TV. Money’s not the only issue, though. Officials I’ve spoken with in the last couple of years admit the pressure and scrutiny have ratcheted up. Some don’t like current VP of Officiating Al Riveron—though, to be fair, Riveron’s got one of the toughest jobs in the game and simply can’t please everyone. And it’s a less-intense gig, obviously, to sit in a studio or broadcast booth while the games are going on and analyze plays in slow motion—instead of in real time, with coaches and players screaming at them.

There’s no easy answer to this. But the league can’t afford to keep losing quality officials, and smart and plain-spoken referees and respected crew leaders like Clete Blakeman, Jerome Boger and Bill Vinovich could be next at the TV negotiating table. The NFL often tries to problem-solve by throwing money at issues. Seems to me that money, and guaranteed contracts, would be a good place to start to stop the flood of referees away from the game.