NFL Referee Lockout is Over

     Yesterday in discussing the idea of a boycott of the NFL, I admitted that I probably couldn't do it myself, but that maybe simply bitching and complaining might be enough especially after the debacle on Monday night with the Packers and Seahawks.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/about-those-nfl-replacement-refs.html

     Score one for bitching and complaining. The refs are coming back to work.

     "It's time to welcome Ed Hochuli and the rest of the NFL officials back into your life! More importantly, it's time to say farewell to the replacement refs. A deal between the NFL and the NFLRA has been agreed upon on Wednesday evening, according to Greg Aiello of the NFL.
The ref lockout is over."

     "Beginning with reports by Chris Mortensen of ESPN and Judy Batista of The New York Times earlier in the day that an agreement was close, a steady drumbeat of positive dispatches emerged from negotiations that reportedly gained intensity after the officiating debacle on "Monday Night Football," when the Seahawks defeated the Packers, 14-12, by way of disputed touchdown as time expired.

      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/nfl-referee-lockout-agreement-replacements_n_1918038.html

      I'm sure they did gain intensity. What happened Monday night put this in the national conscious. The NFL realized that they are really jeopardizing their brand by putting such a blatantly subpar product field.

      The part that was particularly odious about the NFL's action was that it wasn't a question of being unable to afford it.

      It's not like this is Detroit hanging from a thread about to go bankrupt. The NFL didn't say they couldn't afford to pay the refs, just that they see everyone else dumping on the unions and lowballing labor so why shouldn't they?

      "As noted by Alicia Jessop of Forbes, the agreed upon 8-year pact is the longest ever between the referees' union and the NFL. The deal allows current officials to keep their disputed pensions through 2016 and will switch them over to 401ks in 2017, per Mike Sando of ESPN.com."

      "That the union officials were able to stave off the pension freeze that the NFL had been aiming for, grandfathering existing pension plans into the new deal, makes this seem less than the decisive victory that the NFL had hoped for when it went to the replacement officials."

     HuffPo quotes from the Associated Press:

     "The NFL claimed its offers have included annual pay increases that could earn an experienced official more than $200,000 annually by 2018. The NFLRA has disputed the value of the proposal, insisting it means an overall reduction in compensation."

     "Replacement refs aren't new to the NFL. They worked the first week of games in 2001 before a deal was reached. But those officials came from the highest level of college football; the current replacements do not. Their ability to call fast-moving NFL games drew mounting criticism through Week 3, climaxing last weekend, when ESPN analyst Jon Gruden called their work "tragic and comical."

    So it's something of a union victory-and the NFL will go on. It's a pretty sweet deal. As HuffPo says "Our long national nightmare is over." LOL.