Re: lockout over???
Sure the regular refs are going to make mistakes. However you cannot compare the amount of vitriol reserved for guys that are not trained for this job being inserted into an impossible situation presented as a "working formula" to a qualified official, trained for the job making a mistake. Sure the reg-refs are going to make mistakes. What else is new.
Make no mistake about it. Presuming this is now ending it is ending because those involved in having created this fiasco suddenly realized that the NFL, owners, league officials, what have you, have taken every shred of integrity the league had built up over the years, decades really and flushed it right down the toilet. What integrity they have left they will have because we bestow it upon them.
Although I would contend that after Monday Night, they have no choice but to settle this as quickly as possible, the very strong likelihood that this mess will be over within hours, days at worst lends credibility to the story that:
1) the league's actual intent was to break the union
2) since the league's intent was to break the union, they have not been negotiating in good faith up to this point thus extending the period of time we have had this nonsense
3) while intending to break the union and therefore not negotiating in good faith, apparently the NFL itself was completely unprepared for an extended period without the reg-refs and did not produce a contingency plan that had a shred of a chance of working even for a period of time as short as a few weeks!
The only reason we accepted this joke of a plan up until it was finally exposed by the actual performance of the "plan" itself was because we did not believe, could not bring ourselves to believe that the NFL would have handled this as poorly as they have. We could not believe that they would be stupid enough to trade on decades of integrity for whatever benefit the league could get out out of breaking the union. Further, we could not believe that the NFL would not have ramped up a plan that would have at least prevented the utter and complete humiliation and embarrassment that has resulted from what they did in fact put forward.
They knew full well based on what they were trying to achieve that they would be well into regular season games before any chance of resolution. I read one post here yesterday that offered that the league was prepared to go the entire year without the reg-refs, firing everybody for next year and starting with a clean slate, having dissolved its obligation to the current reg-refs. Could you imagine anybody with half a brain having conceived that mess the NFL slung out there would believe it would last for a full season?
The last straw, the coup de grace if you will is that while the original call in the Packers end zone on Monday Night Football was a travesty of officiating best practice, the review system that is the actual every day NFL review system simply not manned per usual, still failed to arrive at the correct conclusion.
Damn right, they suddenly found the intestinal fortitude to solve this like right now.
I will be happy to have the reg-refs back again. However, will I ever believe a word that comes out of the commissioner of the NFL's mouth ever again on any topic of relevance, regardless of who he is? Not a chance. While I tend to be somewhat hard nosed about stuff like this, as the weeks of humiliation and embarrassment went by, more and more fans would be lining up with me I believe, eventually unwilling to ever hold the NFL in the same light again
The only reason we are now getting resolution is that the NFL realized it is on that slippery slope to a complete lack of credibility and virtual irrelevance.
