Source: Gap between NFL, officials is as much as $70 million
 

Source: Gap between NFL, officials is as much as $70 million
Posted by Mike Florio on September 4, 2012, 9:10 AM EDT

The NFL has been driving a hard bargain with the locked-out officials. Now that the replacements are looking like they need to be replaced, the locked-out officials are driving a hard bargain right back at the league.

The best evidence that the regular officials believe they have the upper hand comes from a Monday report that some are determined to sit out for months, if that’s what it takes to get the deal they want.

“This is a battle of right and wrong,” one unnamed official told Mike Freeman of CBSSports.com. “We are willing to wait for as long as it takes.”

Sorry, unnamed official, but that overstates the situation — and invites a backlash. While plenty of fans believe that the NFL is being obstinate because it can, plenty of other fans believe that the locked-out officials incorrectly assume that their income should grow at the same rate the league’s revenues are growing.

NFLRA spokesman Michael Arnold explained to PFT via email on Monday that the officials’ current proposal would have a total cost $30 million in 2012 in salary and benefits.

It’s still not clear what the precise gap is. A league source tells PFT that, when the parties met on Saturday, the NFLRA reverted to their pre-lockout position, which creates a gap of up to $70 million over the seven-year life of the deal.

If that calculation of the gap is based on the NFLRA’s representation of the officials’ position, this means the NFL is offering a total package worth as little as $20 million — and that the gap extends to as much as $10 million per year.

It could be that the parties have an incentive to overstate the divide in order to avoid external pressure on either side to close it. Regardless, it looks like the replacement officials will get their first close up on Wednesday night, whether they’re ready for it or not.

I thought it was $45m?

There is more loose change in Dane's couch.

the fact the the NFLRA responded to the NFL's offer increase by increasing their demands speaks volumes. They are hoping to embarrass the league into giving them whatever they want.

There is a tipping point though ... after awhile the replacement officials will start getting noticeably better and the leverage for the NFLRA will start dropping big time.

If the 2 sides don't agree by the halfway point of the season i don't think there is much incentive for the NFL to agree at all. Just move on and deal with the new group of officials.

Where the NFL ****ed up with these replacement officials, is they CLEARLY did not train these guys at all. They don't know all the rules. This is obvious.

Seems they just tossed them into the fire.

How hard is it to study the rules? I mean, seriously.

They better extend Cassel now while he's still good.

Posturing.
Posted via Mobile Device

LMAO

This is the perfect opportunity to implement a much more video based rule enforcement system. Significantly reduce referee involvement, and increase video based decision making.

The NFLRA better not overplay their hand. There is going to come a point when the Replacements figure it out, and the NFLRA is going to be hosed.

Pretty much.

The only way the Refs get their way is if the replacements lose some games by horrible calls.

If the NFL was smart they'd tell the refs to get ****ed and just rebuild the entire system. Make it a full time year round job with training in the offseason. They could lure in whoever they wanted, including top college crews if it was a permanent job.

The existing problem is all the current refs are rich professionals that treat it like a side business.

Most of these scab refs are not from BCS conferences. The game is much faster. When NFL players are flying around at game speed in real time, you better know what the **** you're doing, and the calls you make better be second nature because the integrity of the NFL depends on it.

There's more to it than just "getting 2 feet in bounds instead of 1".

Boom, there it is.

I thought I read here much earlier that the people in charge of training the refs got fired and had to turn in there computers because they refused to train the replacements.

Yep.

You'd think the officials' best strategy would be to wait a bit, but then put pressure on early in the season when the replacements blow some games.

This is all part of the NFL becoming a huge monster though. The NFL signs all these contracts worth billions of dollars, and everyone wants their piece. It's why the owners locked out the players, now the refs are doing this.

Well said....and dis-allow the NFLRA while they're at it, seriously why do they need a freaking Association of their own. They are referee's for cripes sakes and letting them have the stupid NFLRA allows stupid crap like them holding out to happen.

The refs can fist themselves.

Either they want their careers as lawyers and the like, or they want to be officials at the highest level of the most popular sport in America.

Also they need to decide to enforce rules on a consistent basis.

No, this is mostly a battle over guaranteed lifetime pension benefits, which is something that all private businesses are moving away from because of the carnage that it costs as people live longer.

Full time NFL employees (front office, players, etc.) don't get this, so why should part time refs get this?

Right, they shouldn't.

I'm going to really, REALLY hate replacement refs, but I don't give a damn about the regular refs if they're sticking to their guns on this (and they are, it's apparently one of the biggest sticking points).

Really? What's your definition of a "rich professional"?

Everything I've ever heard says that the NFL referees have to keep their full-time jobs because they don't get paid enough by the NFL to BE full-time officials.

It took less than 30 seconds to find this with Google:

SPORT..........AVERAGE SALARY OF OFFICIALS
NFL..............Between $25K and $70K
MLB..............$141K
NBA..............$128K
NHL..............$139K

It doesn't sound like the referees are the ones at fault here. The NFL is a multi-billion dollar business. I think they can afford full-time referees.

You don't seem to understand labor laws too well. Federal law lets them form a union. Nothing the NFL can do to stop it.

That is true, but there are ways for them to let it be known that they will not negotiate or settle with a Unionized work force. Companies do it all the time.

Yeah, but the season is the shortest length wise and number of games.

I equate this situation to this...same bad idea

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0191397/

That's a terrible argument. You don't base an employee's salary on the number of hours he works. You base it upon the value the position has to the organization.

Would you advocate paying NFL players one-tenth of what MLB players make? After all, they only play 16 games in football. In baseball they play 162. Obviously baseball players should make 10 times as much as football players!

This is the NFL, not some small shipping company or whatever. Hell, labor lawyers might take a heavy discount on their normal fees to sue the NFL and get the vast free publicity that such a case would give. The NFL would get toasted.

"You don't base an employee's salary on the number of hours he works"

I think that is generally part of the equation. What you are essentially saying is that someone who works a weekend doing the same job that someone else does 5 days a week should be compensated exactly the same?

The refs are fighting AGAINST being full-time

the NFL wants some full-time refs

what do those numbers break down PER game?

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.

He does exactly what the owners want him to do. Why would they ever get rid of him?

I think rich professional was a reference to their non-nfl job.

I agree, too.

All this safety and quality stuff the league harps on and they completely contradict themselves with the way they're handling this.

I don't care how much officials make, but I do agree with the league that they should be full-time.

If the officials want the extra cash, then they should accept being on full-time or stick to their day jobs.

Exactly right.

If we as a nation can survive replacing the air traffic control personnel, I'm sure we can get through the learning curve of new officials. The NFLRA is going to bluff their people right out of a job and in this case, I hope the NFL calls that bluff.