Three Blind Refs

Christian Martinelli 

Every sport has some sort of judge, umpire, or referee. Many times they can be the scapegoat for your teams failures, and as you know they’re always out to get your team. In the past many refs have been unethical by betting on games they were apart of, but that is no longer an issue (hopefully). The real issue with refs of all sports these days is that they suck. In plain English, they’re just terrible at their jobs and something needs to be done about this immediately. I’ve got the perfect idea to fix refereeing in all sports, especially the NFL.

The NFL has had prolific refereeing issues for as long as I can remember, from the infamous replacement refs, to last seasons NFC Championship game blunder, and now to their disgraceful performance last week in the Patriots game. These aren’t the only examples, every game of every week you’re due to see some atrocities called by the reffing crews around the league. This is not all the refs fault, due to terrible wording of the rule book, too many rules, and an unbelievable lack of understanding of what is legal and what is not. I’ll give them a pass on the stupidity and confusion that some of the rules clearly have, but that being said they all blow at their jobs.

Do you know why they blow at their jobs? It’s because refereeing isn’t actually their full time job, it’s just a little something they do on the side. Most of these guys are judges or lawyers or accountants in their 50s and 60s. This is not what gets their full focus, it’s their real job they do throughout the week. Also these are old men, far out of their athletic primes, why should men on the brink of retirement who only do this as a part time job have so much control over the outcome of games in a multi billion dollar corporation?

Makes no sense, but this is what Roger Goodell and the NFL does. They make no sense. So, here’s my proposal so that we don’t have anymore phantom stepping out of bounds calls, missed pass interference calls or any more egregious missed calls that even a young Ray Charles could see. Let’s hire younger refs. Not only have these refs be younger, but pay them more. Not only pay them more, but make this their full time job. Not only make this their full time job, but pull new refs from college football as a career choice instead of them not being good enough to play in the league, they can ref it and make a great living as well. 

This is such an easy solution, fire all the old men and get some young athletes on that field that can keep up with the rules and the pace of play. They should be making upwards of 500k a year before the bonuses, and should be held to an extremely high standard. Refs have a massive effect on who wins and loses a game, and they need to become a much bigger part of the background instead of the headlines. NFL take notes, this is how you can evolve the quality on your field, out with the old and in with the new. Bottom line things need to get better, because they can’t get any worse.

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