Locked-Out Referees Ask the NFL to “Do What’s Right and Fair”

In an open letter, the NFL Referees Association has not exactly drawn a line in the
sand with the league or the owners in their contract dispute. In fact, the tone is
almost conciliatory as the group’s executive director,
Tim Millis, outlines the issues, saying, “The goal for both sides must be to get back to the
bargaining table immediately.” So far, that does not seem on the horizon, while the
frustration and anger over the lockout rises among players, coaches, and fans.

“The NFLRA has remained willing to compromise in order to achieve a workable new contract,”
the letter reads.

It opens with the words “Do What’s Right and Fair—for the Game and Its Officials,”
and then describes the matrix of the game as “an ideal in which the best athletes
compete against each other in packed stadiums, while millions of viewers watch on
television.” It says the job of the 121 officials, the individuals who have been locked
out, is to maintain “the integrity and competitive balance of each game within a three-hour
time frame.”

After that, the letter addresses what the NFLRA considers to be the main issues, which
it says go beyond salary and benefits. The sticking point is the contract’s retirement
deal, the so-called “defined-benefit pension package,” on which it says the officials
and their families “have made important life-planning decisions.”

Millis writes: “The NFL now wants to break the promise by eliminating the benefit
[and] instead turning to an inferior defined-contribution plan. I call that plan inferior
because the League’s offer would reduce their funding obligation for the plan by some
60 per cent and at the same time transfer long-term investment risk to [each official].”

Since the lockout began, the NFL referees have been replaced by mostly college-level
referees, who don’t adhere to the same rule book. It’s made some of the games at best
confusing and at worse a mess and contentious, as was evident in Monday night’s contest
between the Atlanta Falcons and the losing Denver Broncos. Up until that game, a lot
of football enthusiasts gave the replacement refs a break, but no longer.

“It’s clear we need the regular officials back, especially if we are concerned about
player safety, as the replacements have little or no control of the game,” wrote NFL.com’s

Michael Lombardi in his Front Office View blog
on
Tuesday.

“The Monday-night Broncos-Falcons matchup represented perhaps
their worst effort,
proving beyond a doubt that we need to end this lockout.”

Carol Ross Joynt