Let's Talk Officials

To Packer fans, it's not secret that the NFL's officials are far from perfect.  Whether it's the infamous non-fumble that allowed the 49ers to knock the Packers out of the playoffs on January 3, 1999, or the more recent Fail Mary against the Seahawks, Packer fans are aware of the influence that a bad call can have on the outcome of a game.  That's not to say that the Packers are special in that regard.  The fact and problem is that they're not.

The officials are rightly maligned when they fail at their jobs.  The recent missed illegal formation that should have given the Chiefs the opportunity to retry a game winning field goal against the Chargers may have dramatically changed the AFC playoff field.  Football Zebras is a blog that does a fantastic job of keeping up with the happenings in NFL officiating, and this post does a good job of looking back at the 2013 season in particular, including the blown field goal call.  The post also highlights some of the better moments of the year.

While I'm first in line to blast officials for their many screw ups, the more I learn about the NFL officiating process from places like Football Zebras and NFL broadcasts, the more convinced I am that NFL officials are set up to fail.  The problems with officiating are less about bad individual officials and more about systemic problems that the NFL continues to fail to address.

Let's start with the obvious.  NFL officials are part time employees.  Many are retired or have regular jobs during the week such as working as attorneys.  Until the NFL has full time officials, they're not going to have crews that are dedicated to being the best officials they can be all week.  Though the NFL is largely unique in that teams play one game a week, it is the only major American professional sports league that employs part time officials.  That's a problem.

I mentioned that some NFL officials are practicing attorneys (Ed Hochuli and Clete Blakeman, according to their Wikipedia pages).  That may be somewhat of a good thing because you need to have a law degree to decipher some of the NFL's rules.  The NFL's rules are overcomplicated, be it the "tuck" rule or the "process of the catch" rule, technical and seldom-applied rules lead to inconsistent application.  Hits on quarterbacks and and receivers are additional problem areas that officials and defenders alike seem to have difficult times with, and rightly so.

But wait, replay helps, right?  Not so much.  Replay takes too long and it's being applied by the same people who made the original call, so that doesn't do a lot to aid consistency of rule application.  Additionally, most of the problem areas are not reviewable.  There's no reason why replay cannot be done more on the fly at a central location at the league office, similar to what the replay officials do on turnovers and scoring plays at the stadium.  If play needs to be stopped, it can be stopped, but expanded and centralized replay is overdue in the NFL.

We've heard over and over from the NFL, during Bounty-Gate, and the lockouts of both the players and officials that the NFL is so concerned with the "integrity of the game."  Integrity of the game  starts with letting the players decide the outcome of games, not the officials.  That means getting calls right, whether it's the opening kickoff of week one or the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl.