NFL’s plan to squeeze refs comes with a big risk: Integrity of the game | Opinion
The NFL scores points by asking for more training and accountability for its referees, but the NFLRA has built-in leverage. Remember 2012's disaster?
Mention the possibility of the NFL enlisting scab refs to Scott Green and it’s like setting off a hand grenade. This is what happens when labor talks go off the rails. The messaging gets rather intense.
“Instead of wasting their money on something that has failed before, we should be at the negotiating table settling our differences,” Green, head of the referees union stuck in some hard bargaining with the NFL, told USA TODAY Sports. “If they’re going to pay these guys $40,000 – which is what I’ve heard – it’s freaking show and tell. You hire 100 guys and it’s four million bucks.
For what? Frankly, I doubt they’ll ever see the field. I can’t believe they would put those guys on the field.
But you never know. ” Uh, didn’t the NFL do that the last time? More: NFL referees, league stop negotiations early as replacement ref plans form When the NFL locked out officials in 2012, it took nearly a month into the regular season – and fallout from the infamous “Fail Mary” call that cost the Green Bay Packers a primetime Monday night victory at Seattle – before order was restored with a new labor deal.
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