The Chris Moeller Archives

The NFL's failing experiment

Roger Goodell and his scab referees are wreaking havoc in the National Football League, damaging credibility, putting players at greater risk for injury, and unintentionally striking a more powerful, visible blow on behalf of the global labor movement than a hundred Labor Day marches.

Sunday night’s Baltimore/New England game, nationally televised on NBC, witnessed almost minute-by-minute missteps by the scab officials, each boner seeming to reverse the momentum of the game and highlighting the wide and growing disparity between the professional officials and the pretenders. Following a controversial winning field goal in the game's closing seconds, Patriots coach Bill Belichick angrily grabbed a scab’s arm, and earlier in the evening, Ravens fans certainly set the world record for the longest “Bull-Shit” chant ever heard on national TV, clocking in at well over a minute.

During the Dallas/Tampa game, an official threw his hat into the middle of the end zone to signify a penalty, and the Cowboys’ receiver Kevin Ogletree, targeted by his quarterback, tripped over it and briefly fell to his knees, possibly causing his team a touchdown. In the Tennessee/Detroit game, a helmet-to-helmet hit caused a 27(?) yard penalty due to a mismarking of the foul, and in the Minnesota/San Francisco game, an official tried to call a blocking-in-the-back penalty on the 49ers—when they were the kicking team. Raiders receiver Darius Heyward Bey was hospitalized with an injured neck after another vicious helmet-on-helmet hit. No penalty was called on the play.

Game-by-game, the performance of the scabs, both in arbiting disputes on the field and in policing unsportsmanlike conduct, has been so generally awful that network broadcasters, normally faithful suck-ups to the league office, have been forced to maintain an almost-constant on-air dialogue about the ineptitude and lack of game control by the fill-ins. The two analysts covering the St. Louis/Chicago game couldn’t help but remark on the unprofessional officiating they were watching. The head referee ridiculously and disrespectfully called a penalty against “St. Looey” at one point, and when the extracurricular hitting got too rough at another time, they flashed some earlier-in-the-week comments by a Rams defensive back suggesting that he loves the replacement refs because he can get away with more misconduct. The previous weekend, the Rams beat the Kikes (interchangeable Washington team nickname) on an offensive drive that should have never been after the Rams head coach was improperly allowed to challenge a penalty, and in Week One, the Rams lost a game when the Lions were awarded an extra play. I guess Commissioner Goodell expects those two games to just even out.

Reliably Republican Al Michaels, the all-but-official voice of the NFL establishment, couldn’t even ignore the madness during the Ravens/Patriots game he was calling. The veteran play-by-play man who opened the 2010 football season by mocking Minnesota and New Orleans players on the air for making a joint gesture of labor solidarity on the field had to admit last night that officials had lost control of the game in the fourth quarter as the Patriots were driving down the field trying to add to a two point lead, even while he added the wildly inaccurate disclaimer to this opinion that “nobody is blaming” the replacement officials.

Actually, yes they are. Many people are blaming them—at least those that recognize how blacklegs like these are used as a weapon of management to prolong a labor strike. Simply stated, the longer the scabs continue to be on the field, sniffing jock straps, and refusing to drop their chins to the ground and cower away from the field like the snakes they are, the longer this embarrassing and physically dangerous misadventure will continue.

And what a motley group they are too, these scabs. One had to be dismissed by Goodell after photos were discovered of him on his Facebook page wearing New Orleans Saints clothing. It turns out he’s a loyal fan of the team and the photos were taken while he was tailgating at a preseason game this year. Another scab that’s still on the job today was formerly on the payroll of the Seattle Seahawks, and another is a professional poker player so… yeah, no potential complications there.

Several wiseacres away from the game (and now Patriots linebacker Brandon Spikes too, via Twitter) have joked that the incompetent replacement officials must be castaways from Foot Locker, the chain store shoe seller famous for having their employees dress in referee zebra stripes. But that’s a slanderous comparison. Selling shoes is honest work. Strikebreaking isn’t.

A scab is a scab is a scab.

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Though they’ve been generally supportive in their language, it’s unfortunate to see NFL players still on the job while their co-workers are on strike. The reason they are is because their union negotiated a separate Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the league. This is also why the union I belong to, the International Workers of the World (IWW), opposes these individual agreements on principle. Workers should all belong to the same union, regardless of craft, skill level, or even political borders. This strike would have been over before the Hall of Fame Game if the game officials had the leverage of the players, the stadium staff, broadcast workers, etc. on their side.

And of course, that 'et cetera' I just used is an enormous 'et cetera.' Now we’re getting into that philosophical area where everybody is in the same union, owning the business collectively, and we don’t need owners at all. Individual owners are the only useless ingredient, as the non-profit, community-owned Green Bay Packers have proven. I venture to guess that if the owners for every one of the 31 other NFL teams had gone AWOL during the first three weeks of the new season, nobody on the field, in the stands, or watching at home would have noticed they were missing.

posted by CM @ 7:21 PM