Chicken or the egg. Are they not paid enough so they are not full time or are they not full time thus not paid as much? Its on the table for them to be full time by the NFL. The refs are fighting against that. Why should they be paid as much as full time officials in other sports?

I agree.

Maybe we just play with replacements all this year, but next year the NFL rolls out a new system where most officiating happens in near real time but through video-assisted officials in the booth.

They need to use more video assistance, but also speed things up when they do.

As far as I'm concerned those ****ers can go have some anal sex with former air traffic controllers.

Explain how Honda and Toyota keep Unions out of their plants if you think it's just a small business that could do this.

I guess I missed the part where the refs are fighting against being full-time refs. What are they doing in that regard?

Most of the refs(if not all) have other jobs

They want to get salaries and pensions like full-time without actually being full-time.

They also want to be paid as much a guys who work 2,3,10 times as many games without working that much.

they don't want the NFL to have a stand-by crew so they can replace shitty refs.

No idea what the history is there. I imagine the NFL Referees unionized a very long time ago. With the players having unionized, I imagine there was not much option to try to strong-arm the refs to prevent them from also unionizing.

I know Toyota, and perhaps Honda, tended to keep their plants out of the "rust-belt" states, and that may be in part in an effort to help them convince their workers not to unionize. The point is that Toyota and Honda may have convinced their workers not to unionize, but if they wanted to they couldn't have stopped them. The NFL refs apparently wanted to and did.

It depends upon the nature of the job. If the job is to provide technical support for customers between the hours of 8:00 and 5:00, then you need people who'll have their butts in the office from 8:00 to 5:00, and you wouldn't pay a part-time employee the same as you'd pay a full-time employee. However, if the job is to sell a million dollars worth of life insurance every month and one guy has to work 160 hours to get it done and another gets it done in 5 hours, then yes, they should be paid exactly the same. In the second case the value provided is for the results, not for the amount of time it takes to achieve the results.

If the job is to make real-time judgments in high-pressure situations during NFL football games where the annual revenue of the league is 9 billion dollars and poor officiating could cause the outcomes of many games to be decided incorrectly, then I don't really care about the fact that a referee only works 16 games per season. The only requirement would be that the referee puts in enough hours every week to be able to work at peak performance on game days. The value provided is the results, not the number of hours worked.

Now, if the referees are the ones resisting being full-time referees, then those referees should be fired and replaced with people who want the full-time gig.

Those are simple issues to address. If they insist upon keeping their other jobs, they should be fired and replaced. All referees should work every week, and the shitty ones should be replaced.

If those are truly the issues that are holding up the negotiations, then the referees are being asses. However, if the NFL is refusing to pay its referees as much as officials get in the other major sports, then the NFL is being an ass. It's high time the NFL used full-time referees and the referees should spend their time during the week perfecting their craft.

Break it down per game.

What I have heard is these guys are barely even capable. I heard they tried to get the SEC and other college football refs but they declined. They didn't want to cross the picket lines because some of them want the jobs someday.

They should get paid and get their pensions imo. They can't be replaced imo. I think that someone could get hurt bad this week because of the refs. If they do, Goddell is going to look like a fool after constantly talking safety.

I'm tired of Goddell. It's time for a change. I know Condaleeza Rice wants to be the NFL Commish one day. Maybe it's time?

ROFL Seen the profits and the media deals the NFL has? Goodell is going nowhere.

Rich professionals outside of the NFL. High dollar lawyers, businessmen, etc. The NFL isn't their income, its their hobby.

These are guys that don't need the money or job. They want to leverage their position for a bigger return on the investment.

Replace them with guys that will do this for a living.

By building their plants in areas that aren't traditional manufacturing areas and the people are generally low income? Just a guess.

heard somebody on the radio talking about this tonight. He said the NFL is risking injury to players by not keeping the best, most talented officials. He said they are a multi billion dollar corporation fussing over small change and risking a lot. I agree.