A year ago at this time, the NFL and the NFL Player's Association were in the middle of collective bargaining talks. While I never actually thought that the negotiations would lead to the cancellation of any regular season games, teams were not able to go into the year with a full offseason of preparation to work with. All 32 teams had to deal with this though, so it isn't like anyone had an unfair advantage, and all is well that ends well, so when the season ended, I obviously didn't care much about my team missing some parts of training camp.
When the NFL and the NFLPA finally did reach an agreement last year and football had finally returned, normalcy was restored. However, the NFL made a public statement today about more collective bargaining troubles, this time between the league and the referees. The deal between the two sides expires on May 31, and it seems as though there is a good possibility that the two sides will not reach an agreement before that date. If there is no deal, the NFL has said that it will consider locking out the officials just like it did to the players a year ago, and hiring some college and semi-pro officials as replacements until a new deal was signed.
This may not seem like much of a problem to most fans, but I think it is. Officials in most professional sports, in my opinion, do not get enough credit. NFL officials have so much to watch on any given play, and I think that a lot of these new rules that have been implemented in recent years with the intention of making the game safer have made it much tougher for officials, because if they wanted to, they could probably throw a penalty flag on every play.
NHL officials don't get enough credit for the job they do either. Aside from calling penalties and stepping in between players to break up fights, the hardest part of being an NHL official is probably simply getting out of the way of the play on the ice. Unlike other sports where officials can step out of bounds or into foul territory, NHL officials do not have that luxury. Add that to the fact that there are four of them, plus 12 players, and the game moves up and down the ice so fast, and I'm always surprised how rare it is to see them actually get caught up in the middle of a play.
Watching an NBA game or a professional soccer game also makes you realize how tough it is for officials in those sports as well. There is no way I would be able to officiate either of those sports, because every game I would work would be 0-0. I would just call traveling on every play in the NBA and give red cards to everyone on a soccer field for diving and faking injuries that there would never be any goals or baskets made. (Of course that isn't 100% true...only about 95%).
The toughest officiating job in all of professional sports though is umpiring a Major League Baseball game, and the race for second isn't even close. The calls that these guys have to constantly make are usually so close that it seems as though you need to have six senses to get them correct even half of the time. In no other sport does an official have as much impact as a home plate umpire, as he is called upon to make decisions on every pitch. First base umpires are constantly making calls that are so close it is hard to even tell whether or not a runner was out or safe in slow motion. Yet more often than not, they get the calls right, even when it looks in real time as if there is no way the throw beat the runner to the base.
All of these problems would be more than enough for most, yet I haven't even mentioned the fact that the hardest part of officiating any sport has to be dealing with the players, fans, and coaches/managers. According to those people, officials are wrong about 99% of the time. If an NFL referee throws a flag for pass interference, he has the defensive players and coaches in his ear about it being a bad call. When he makes the same call against the other team later in the game, he hears it from both teams. Add the fans into that, and it sometimes makes me wonder why anyone would actually even want to be an NFL official.
Officials in the NBA and college basketball are running up and down the floor right past the coaches of both teams for the entire game. The coaches and benches are all over the officials constantly, sometimes so much so that it seems like they must be making things up to yell at the officials because there is no way he could have blown enough calls to warrant four quarters of harassment. Major League Baseball umpires are the only ones I have a problem with as far as ego and attitude, because some of them make extremely exaggerated calls on balls and strikes, and a lot of them initiate arguments with players and managers and then throw the guys out of games for responding. Granted, a lot of the arguments between managers and umpires are stupid and it seems as though the manager is just arguing for no reason, but the umpires do obviously incite some of the arguments and then try to act like tough guys for the cameras. However, they still have extremely tough jobs, so (in most cases) I can forgive them for that.
Also, as if these downfalls of the job aren't bad enough, most of these guys have to get other jobs during the offseasons
In the end though, this collective bargaining dispute is about what every other contract dispute is about. One side thinks they are worth more than the other side, and it is just a matter of reaching an agreement somewhere in between. As is the case with most things the NFL does though, this will probably work out in the end. If it doesn't though, I just might actually miss Ed Hochuli taking about an hour and a half to explain why he made each call that he did, as well as Jeff Triplette mispronouncing the word "holding" for an entire game. So I hope this dispute can be worked out because at least then these guys can only spend half of their time working their second jobs, and the other half of their time doing what they really love, spending 60 minutes getting yelled at by Tom Coughlin.
Daily Rangers Update: All of the other second round series have ended, so the eyes of the entire NHL world will be on Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, and hopefully there will be more games to come there soon after. Let's Go Rangers!
Daily Diamondbacks Update: Well the good news is that there is no chance of losing today because there is no game on the schedule. San Francisco comes to town starting tomorrow night with the Diamondbacks coming off a sweep at the hands of the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals. Offense, defense, pitching...something needs to wake the team up.
Daily Giants Update: Rookie minicamp starts this weekend, so we will get our first look at the newest members of the defending Super Bowl champions very soon.
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