My Two Cents: NFL Welcomes Back the Zebras
What’s up RaiderNation? Welcome to this week’s edition of My Two Cents, with your favorite senior citizen Raider fan, Old Timer. I want to give a big shout out to our server last night from Sweet Rivers Bar and Grill. Unfortunately, I did not catch her name, but she is a fellow member of the one nation, the RaiderNation, and she made sure that the beer I drank came in a glass with a Raiders insignia on it. Thanks for the great service!! But enough with the idle chat. This week we will take a look at a travesty which has finally come to an end. The replacement refs are gone and that means we will once again have somewhat competent officials officiating the games (and faster service at Footlocker stores everywhere LOL).
Now don’t get me wrong here, I am not laying the blame on the replacement refs. They did they best they could with the limited experience they had. You have to take into consideration that prior to this August, none of them had ever officiated an NFL game, and some had only officiated High School and Jr. College games. They did they best they could do with the experience they had. And they were under the microscope the whole time, so it is safe to say that they were blamed for more than they really should have been. Lets face it, we have complained about officials blowing calls for decades, and rightfully so as they have missed badly many times over the years. The point I am trying to make here is even the trained officials have blown calls, so we should have expected them to miss calls. The real difference was, the number of blown calls.
Further complicating the situation was the fact that because of their inexperience, the replacement refs were easily influenced by players and coaches. We saw this time an time again with flags that would be thrown long after the play had ended because of complaints by players or coaches. The replacement refs felt “demonized” by the players, and the public. Let’s face it, there was as much news about the replacement officials as there was about the games they officiated. They have been the brunt of jokes by talk show hosts, (and yours truly), and even youtube videos:
Now this is something that was expected, and that is where the real travesty lies. I wrote an article about it before over a month ago, and I certainly don’t have the insight that the NFL teams, owners, and the Commissioner’s office have. Here is a link to that article in case you are interested in reading: http://silverandblackdaily.com/2012/08/25/my-two-cents-8-25-12/
You see, the real travesty is not the officiating job that was performed by the replacement officials, rather it is in the fact that the Commissioner’s office, and the NFL owners knew what was going to happen, yet chose to allow the players and fans to be subjected to the use of replacement officials in order to play hardball with the regular officials. I would imagine they had hoped that the replacement officials would do just well enough to escape a complete uprising by the fans, long enough to bring the regular officials to their knees and willing to accept whatever deal was offered them. They even went so far as to instruct the league not to complain about the officiating, and even fined several coaches who did. And their plan seemed to be working until last Monday’s debacle. As I had suggested in my previous article, the results of a game were decided by a horrendous call on the last play if the game.
The call was instantaneously ranked as one of the worst calls of all time, and compare to the tuck rule call. Interestingly enough, Charles Woodson and Jon Gruden were present for both calls. It is also interesting that it appears to have taken a horrible call against the Green Bay Packers to force the hands of the Commissioner’s office to get a deal done. If it had been the Raiders getting shafted by that call, I would be willing to bet the replacement officials would still be out there again this week.
But it was the Packers that lost, and the replacement officials are gone. It will be interesting to see how well the regular officials do now that they are back. Will they be under as much scrutiny as the replacement refs were? Will the number of bad calls reduce dramatically right away? I guess we will find out soon enough. Let me know what you think RaiderNation!! Leave a comment, or hit me up with an email. I promise to reply as soon as I get the opportunity to do so.
Well, that’s it for this week my Raider brothers and sisters. Make sure to check back next week for another edition of My Two Cents.Peace out RaiderNation!!
Old Timer
Questions? Comments? Email me at OldTimer@silverandblackdaily.com
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