When we thought replacements could do an impossible job.
Imagine sending a guy with four years of deep-sea fishing experience to go do the job done by those cats on "Deadliest Catch". "He's fished on the ocean before, so he'll be able to catch us a use-able amount of crabs while our normal guys are asking for better insurance benefits," goes the thinking. Right, but the new guy's never seen anything quite like this. He'll do fine for a couple weeks, with some miscues. But then he'll get caught in a serious storm, the likes of which he hasn't dealt with before. He honestly won't know what to do. It's not his fault; the crash-course in training he received can only get him so far. So in all likelihood something terrible will happen--equipment will be lost or broken, a significant portion of the past week's catch will be lost, the ship will capsize--something to the suits realize, "What were we thinking? Nobody can just step up and do this job."
It's not as serious with sports (because it's sports, not real-life), but in the case of the NFL replacement officials, it's just as egregious an error on the part of NFL brass. They have been officiating Division III college football for years, so it's fair to say they understand the rules of football. But it also should have been obvious to the NFL that they were (and are) woefully unprepared for what they would be (and are) seeing on the field.
About 2.5 percent of college football players make it into the NFL. That's the strongest, fastest, most athletic 2.5 percent of all college football players. Most of those guys come from the FBS, a stronger, faster, more athletic division of college football than Division III. Of all those college football players that make it to an NFL team, not all of them play. No, just the strongest, fastest, most athletic group of 30-35 players play for each team (before accounting for injuries).
See where this is going? These referees have vaulted into an entirely different world of football. Steve Young said it best after last night's game, that the NFL is so much faster in person than anything these guys have ever seen, they never stood a chance. Being an NFL official is already an extremely difficult job--it's why fans are constantly pissed off at the officials in years past. So why would anyone think a replacement is a good solution?
Don't blame the replacement referees for these early-season debacles. It is technically their fault, but they were put in an impossible situation. Blaming them would be tantamount to blaming me for ruining your softball team's chances at the intramurals or parks and rec championship. Yeah, I'm bad, so the team has no chance of winning, but I shouldn't be in this position if excellence was the initial goal.
Think these things through a little bit.
