PLANK SEPTEMBER 25, 2012
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If you went to bed early last night, you will want to watch how the Green Bay Packers-Seattle Seahawks football game ended. Down five with the clock turning to zero, Seahawks QB Russell Wilson heaves a hail-mary pass into the end zone. Several players from both teams go up for it—although one Seahawks receiver pretty clearly pushes a Packers defender to the ground, which should have resulted in an offensive pass interference call that would have made the ball dead and ended the game with a Packers victory. A Packer seems to catch the ball, while a Seahawk quickly grabs hold of it, so that by the time they hit the ground it appears they both have possession—which, according to NFL rules, means that the pass was an interception, which also would have ended the game with a Packers victory. Instead, the two refs on the scene give opposite calls: an immortal moment that you can see in the above image (the ref on the left is signaling touchback, meaning interception; the ref on the right is is signaling touchdown). Eventually, the play is ruled a touchdown. Seahawks win.
The play came at the end of a game, and a weekend, characterized by increasingly poor officiating by the replacement referees, whom the league hired after it locked out its referees union because they failed to come to a new collective bargaining agreement. The replacements are an embarrassment (we’ve long known some of them previously served in the Lingerie Football League; we now know some of them were fired by the Lingerie Football League). Though the referees union and the league are only separated by something like $50 million, the league has a point when it asks, for example, that the referees move from a penson to a 401(k) as other league employees have. When I spoke to him yesterday, Peter Carfagna, who lectures on sports law at Harvard Law School, said that he felt both sides had plenty of room for compromise and that a good mediator would be able to broker a deal in very little time. Indeed, a federal mediator is now involved. But all that is secondary to the Great God of Public Opinion, which has just given the professional refs all the leverage it could. After last night’s prominent outrage, it beggars belief that the real refs will not be back by Sunday’s games.
They, too, will be imperfect. But they will be better, and they will be more professional, and they will possess a certain authority—a kind of charisma, really—that will make the game no longer seem as fifth-rate as it has the past couple of weeks. If they don’t reach this deal, then on the grounds of workers’ rights as well as quality of the product you’re being served, you should strongly consider withholding your viewership.
Before the deal gets done and we stop talking about this and start talking about other things (Matthew Stafford’s injured again! Michael Vick might lose the starting job! The Arizona Cardinals are really good!), a few reflections on Refgate.
• Last night’s call was not the worst call the replacement refs (“scabs” one wants to call them) have made. Sunday, for example, they permitted the San Francisco 49ers to make two challenges despite the fact that the Niners had no timeouts left, even though one must have a timeout when making a challenge—an inarguable screw-up. And there have been too many instances of phantom interferences, penalties assigned to the wrong players, and just general incompetence to count. Nor was it, necessarily, the only bad call they have made that decided a game—it was just the first to come literally on a decisive final play.
• Typically, the home team wins a little more than 50 percent of the time. This season, the home team is 31-17. In L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias J. Moskowitz’ book Scorecasting, the authors study home-field advantage and conclude that it is due almost exclusively to the officiating. Preliminary conclusion: the replacements are intimidated by the fans and giving the home teams more calls. Do I even need to tell you last night’s game was in Seattle?
• On Sunday, the players union released a statement calling on the owners to end the lockout. While it focused on player safety and “the integrity of the game,” it also included this crucial sentence: “Your actions are looking more and more like simple greed.” Solidarity!
• Speaking of player safety: Oakland Raiders receiver Darius Heyward-Bey was briefly hospitalized for a concussion after sustaining an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit that the replacements did not flag. One replacement tripped a player with his hat (a referee throws his hat if he has already thrown his flag). The player safety stuff is not just pious lip service.
• Read the players’ statement again. It is addressed to “Owners of NFL Teams” and uses the construction, “allow your Commissioner.” Commissioner Roger Goodell, the go-to villain in this saga, is not blameless, but nor is he the main wrongdoer. He, too, is an employee of the owners. Until he or she says otherwise, it is fair to assume that all owners—not just the usual evil suspects—are against restoring the integrity of the game by paying a piddling amount to their unionized employees in favor of hiring scabs to make a hash of their product.
• The players had remained relatively silent—until late last night, when a few took to Twitter (and one, the Pundit Punter Chris Kluwe, took to Deadspin) to express their outrage. The reason for this, Harvard’s Carfagna suggested, is that their collective barganing agreement—itself negotiated under the cloud of a lockout—bars them from speaking out. (This is also, he suggested, why they can’t threaten a solidarity strike.) A quick look reveals that, in the same paragraph that discusses taking bribes, the CBA stipulates that if a player “is guilty of any other form of conduct reasonably judged by the League Commissioner to be detrimental to the League or professional football, the Commissioner will have the right” to fine, suspend, or expel the player. Goodell rules by fiat.
Last night, Packers guard T.J. Lang tweeted his frustration with the call and then acknowledged he would probably be fined. Please understand that there is little difference between this situation and that of anonymous officeworkers across the country who are similarly denied free speech by their employers, and that if Lang is fined, the league will have demonstrated it is more committed to dividing and conquering its employees than to satisfying its consumers. Which is to say, please understand that this is not just about football.
13 comments
Another wasted post, Marc. "You should strongly consider withholding your viewership". Maybe you're sufficiently disciplined and idealistic to stick it to the man, and you can go on ad nauseum about the fiasco on the field, but NFL ratings are not gonna change. That's the reality, even player safety be damned. Our only hope here is if the owners are influenced by increasingly poor public perceptions of their product quality. So far as I can tell, they're only moved by profitability, and yours and anyone else's call for a boycott be met with derision and failure. Sorry man.
- RJSampson1
September 25, 2012 at 10:42am
Not sure I agree, RJ. I'll continue to watch my beloved Niners (despite their lousy game this past Sunday, which they couldn't win despite the breaks they got from the refs). But I have no trouble passing on Monday and Sunday Night Football and other games that don't involve SF. I'll grant, though, that I may be far from typical. Anyway, it's not just $$$ that motivates the owners, as greedy as they are. Most of these guys are also incredible egomaniacs. This mess makes them look horrible in the eyes of the press, the public, friends and colleagues. Maybe wishful thinking on my part, but I think that could tip the balance. Or at least I hope so. The reffing in last night's game was truly deplorable, even to this SF fan who wanted GB to lose because I'm more worried about home field advantage in the play-offs against them than I am about Seattle's standing in the division. Well, actually, deplorable is too mild a word...
- Thunderroad
September 25, 2012 at 12:03pm
Out here in Seattle almost all Seahawks fans are not only lambasting the "refs," but the outcome of the game. Seattle has a great defense, but a lousy offense, and they didn't deserve to get a W Monday night. Goodell has a right to overturn the result of the game, and I hope he does. RJSampson1, the NFL is going to lose MY viewership, until the real refs come back. Why should I watch a joke of a game, even if my team "wins?" NFL owners are a perfect example of corporate America's greed. The league is making record profits, like corporate America in general, but they often refuse to hire and/or compensate productive employees--employees who enhance their product. Abusive unions disgust me, too (I've been in 2 of them, the UAW and the Teamsters), but the refs union ain't one of those. When you're making staggering profits during a serious recession, don't try to bust a union and make your product into a joke. Speaking of jokes, the NFL players union is a joke, too, like all pro players unions in America. When they protest against the owners, it's individuals sometimes worth hundreds of millions of dollars each whining to individuals sometimes worth billions of dollars each. I don't feel sorry for either side in that dust-up.
- magboy47.
September 25, 2012 at 12:09pm
Not sure I'd be quite as harsh on the players and their union as you were in your concluding paragraph, magboy, but I hear where you're coming from and anyway I think the rest of your post is spot-on. This whole dispute says a lot about the owners and by extension about some very nasty things going on in our society more generally.
- Thunderroad
September 25, 2012 at 12:23pm
Thunderroad, Niners fan, eh? I'm a Lions fan, as well as a Seahawks fan, and SF sure stuck it to Detroit the last couple of years. However, I go back to the one-game playoff in 1956, when the Lions won in SF for the right to go to the the NFL Championship game against Cleveland, which they won, 59-14--with Tobin Rote, who replaced the injured Bobby Layne, at QB. Ah, memories. SF had a great RB from the University of Washington, Hugh McElhenny, in the Fifties and an equally great WR, R.C. Owens, who, together with QB Y.A. Tittle, invented the Alley Oop TD pass. I can still see Owens skying in the end zone to snag the ball. Megatron is the guy who comes closest to Owens today.
- magboy47.
September 25, 2012 at 12:25pm
Oh I watched the Packers/Seahawks - natch - I was praying for the Packers to lose (them being Enemy #1 in these parts:) but oy. To be honest that last play was thrilling, confusing, ambiguous, I have watched the replay several times and am not sure what the heck happened. Regardless there were other bad calls during the game. Anyway I don't get it. This is like Reagan vs the air traffic controllers, here we have a multi-billion dollar industry and the owners have locked out the refs over $10/$15 million or so? Dang I never thought I'd miss the zebras.
- Sophia
September 25, 2012 at 12:28pm
The use of scab refs are just the latest example of how the corporate greed mindset is such that selling a shoddy product is second only to making a profit. Having watched the terrible/awful/horrible/shitty officiating of the Saints vs Chiefs game on Sunday (did I mention how shitty/horrible/awful/terrible the officiating was?) I can only surmise the NFL Owners give a rats ass about fan satisfaction, player safety or labor fairness. It's all about the Benjamins as they say on the street. After this weekend, I'm not watching any more football until the officiating dispute is resolved. I'm relegating myself to college ball and try to muster some 'fan pride' for the LSU tigers even if they aren't my alma mater.
- singlspeed
September 25, 2012 at 12:52pm
Says a lot about how far to the right the goal posts have moved that a *TNR* blogger thinks a union should just roll over on pensions into 401(k)s already....
- Wonderland
September 25, 2012 at 12:55pm
Right on, singlespeed! Fan strike! I wish there were more of those in pro sports. In the Great Scheme of Things, Seattle's "win" Monday may have been a make-up for their loss in Detroit in the Super Bowl years ago, due to horrible officiating by the cream of the referee crop. In that case the refs were intimidated by a Detroit crowd that had been whipped into a frenzy by their criminal mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who later went to prison. Your LSU Tigers really mauled my Washington Huskies a couple weeks ago. I boycotted that game, too, after the first quarter--too painful to watch. College football, notably the Huskies, is the only sport I'm into emotionally, although I follow all sports somewhat, except soccer and curling. I won't miss the NFL while the legit refs are out.
- magboy47.
September 25, 2012 at 1:12pm
magboy...at least your Huskies show up for their games. I can't say the same for my true alma mater the CU Buffs. I'm still waiting for them to get past the "rebuilding" phase after they won the national championship in 1990.
- singlspeed
September 25, 2012 at 3:30pm
The only way this will be solved is via pressure that's generated far greater than what the fans can generate. That's with the owners collectively saying "Enough is enough" and directing Goddell to resolve things. And speaking of that hypocrite, it would be cosmic justice that we find out down the road that one and / or many of The Replacements were betting on the action or involved with game fixing chicanery. These guys weren't thoroughly vetted prior to receiving assignments (see "Lingerie League," "Saints Facebook") and they're not paid much. According to the sportsbook manager at the Wynn, last night's debacle resulted in a $150 million shift (in favor of Vegas) over the public.
- OkiSaru
September 25, 2012 at 6:35pm
On the other hand, the conspiracy theorist in me can't help but note that nobody is talking about player concussions, long-term brain damage, or suicides by ex-players anymore.
- cspencef
September 25, 2012 at 6:51pm
I joked at church today that the referee should have ruled that the two embracing players were so close that they should get married. Even though it's a church that's pretty tolerant of gays (and atheists such as me), the joke fell a little flat. I also wondered if the laws of Wisconsin should apply or the laws of Washington state. Their wussie cats in Wisconsin, recognizing domestic partnership but too kitty to allow gaily marriage. Washington is too busy licking their furs (or whatever part of the anatomy your kitty is currently licking, cats being what they are) to make up its tiny mind. I'll ask my chickens who are too busy killing mice to know their own tiny minds, what they think on the matter.
- skahn
September 26, 2012 at 8:15pm