If you thought the Chicago teachers’ strike was the only labor strife in the news, you’re not an NFL fan. The league has locked out its referees for the most spurious of reasons; it wants to change their pensions from defined benefit to defined contribution [a 401(k)], thereby putting the responsibility for the success of those pensions on the shoulders of the employees, not on management.

“From the owners’ standpoint, right now they’re funding a pension program that is a defined benefit program,” said Goodell, who was in Washington on Wednesday attending a luncheon hosted by Politico’s Playbook. “About ten percent of the country has that. Yours truly doesn’t have that. It’s something that doesn’t really exist anymore and that I think is going away steadily.”

“What we agreed to do and offer as ownership,” he added, “is that they would have a defined contribution plan, in the form of 401(k), so they’ll still have a pension plan but the risk, like [for] most of us, would be on individuals.”

And just why should the risk be on individuals, Roger? This is very similar to the old argument we’ve all heard from our mothers: “Just because everyone else jumped off the roof doesn’t mean you should.”

Now, two weeks into the season, the inability of the replacement referees is becoming more obvious. Last night’s Monday Night Football game had some particularly egregious examples of their failures.

. . . a group of N.F.L. referees taking a few minutes under the lights of “Monday Night Football” to figure out where a ball should be placed after a defensive holding penalty would be amusing. But with replacement officials making scenes like that one too common and sometimes struggling with the rules of the game, the amusement has begun to fade.

[snip]

Two weeks into the regular season, with the N.F.L.’s lockout of its officials going strong, replacement officials have awarded a team an extra timeout in a close game, ruled multiple incomplete passes as fumbles, missed an array of pass-interference and unnecessary-roughness calls, and in one game took six minutes to review a play that they subsequently determined was not reviewable. One referee was removed from the crew of a New Orleans Saints game after publicly proclaiming himself a Saints fan.

To be clear, I don’t blame the replacement refs. They aren’t top tier college coaches; they’re from the smaller conferences. According to Sports Illustrated, that’s because many of the regular refs are supervisors of officials “for the Big East, Big 12, Pac-12, Big Ten and Conference USA and they won’t allow officials from those conferences to work NFL games. The source said that, in solidarity with the NFL zebras, supervisors in other FBS conferences won’t allow their officials to work NFL games either.”

No, this is just greed on the part of the NFL owners. They’re exactly the kind of people who attend fundraisers like the one at which Mitt Romney spoke his mind ($50K a plate!) and the kind who applaud the remarks he made.