I, for one, love the replacement referees in the NFL. I find them as exciting as the BCS on Monday morning, you fell slightly hungover, while you scratch your head in amazement over what happened, while drinking your first cup of coffee. In true American fashion, however, the new refs provide instant gratification. Instead of morning after wonderment, you can have it the minute they make an absurd call, while you place your 4th, 5th, or 6th beer (depending on what quarter the game is in).
Now granted, the NFL referees are among the lowest, if not the lowest, paid professional officials of any sport. I can't imagine, though, too many better part-time jobs . Let's think about this problem. It is ultimately, at least for now, still a human game; mistakes will be made. I'm not sure it is even a question of what to do about the mistakes when they happen. Our delicate egos can't roll with any negatives associated with competition. Obviously, we do nothing, tell them it is okay and to try to make better calls next time around. (Fingers crossed!!)
But perhaps not all the blame should be placed at the feet of the "Not-A-Ref's." Follow along with me for a minute.
Professional athlete "player minimum salaries" instantly qualify them to be the subject of ridicule from the Occupy Wall Street crowd by placing them in the 1%. Why are professional athletes, and other entertainers, the only professionals that do not have to raise their conduct and performance to be commensurate with their pay? Why do they get a pass necessitating a specially trained nanny to prevent them from becoming base animals? If that is the standard of behavior then it also needs to be the standard of pay. What is the going rate for zoo animals?
Everybody that has ever played a referee'd sport knows that human in the loop is just a another potential game changer. Those that have played small town baseball likely know the term "home cooking" applied to baseball wasn't because of the food, it was because of who personally knew, and paid, the umpires. Which way do you think the close calls, or benefit of the doubt, goes? Every human interaction is part of the game. The sports are becoming victims of technology. First television brought us the slow motion replay, making us desperate to have a correction mechanism. Then it brought the yellow line so that each and every one of us can make the first down call. These aren't bad for the game, and fortunately the reviewable issues are still limited. What's next, making penalties reviewable?
If we make penalties reviewable, do we even need a referee? Maybe one in the booth. On the field you can employee clowns to grab the ball and put it down, mark off all the penalties caught on the review and entertain the crowd between snaps. Then we will fully have football on the same social road, where we review everything for fairness.
Maybe it isn't about football at all. After all, sports are frequently used in metaphors. Maybe football is simply a metaphor of some desired Utopia where everything is reviewed for "fairness," and no errors occur. The problem with every Utopian ideal that has been asserted is that the human in the loop gets to make the rules. From there it doesn't take long to be compromised or show favoritism. The Terminator movie series examined a pitfall of eliminating the human from the loop, and I'm not sure we are, or ever should be, ready for that era. So maybe this isn't about some deeper examination of our humanity. Maybe it is as simple as re-learning and teaching our children how to compete; and holding those that have so much to a higher standard. I'd rather have that than their tax money. Instead, it seems the politically correct answer is to blow sums on professional apologists, which we then eat up. Ultimately nobody benefits.
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