Roger Goodell’s bad night

A week ago I wrote about the replacement referees the NFL is using for its games while it tries to force its regular officials into accepting a defined contribution retirement plan, probably a 401(k), rather than the defined benefit plan they have now. It’s doing this because the owners are a club of 31 extraordinarily rich men and one person representing the stockholders of the Green Bay Packers and they’re greedy. Here’s Peter King at Sports Illustrated:

Over the last five years, the league has contributed, on average, about $5.3 million per year to the officials’ pension plan. The league, in keeping with the current cost-cutting practice of corporations across America, no longer wants to guarantee how much each official would get in retirement, but rather tie the contributions to a 401(k)-type pension. That would save the league about $3.3 million per year.

Many would say that giving part-time officials a pension contribution of $12,500 per year is sufficient. But the locked-out officials look at it this way: The league is more prosperous than it ever has been, and more profitable than it ever has been. What is the justification for cutting pensions by 60 percent in a booming football economy?

Last night in Seattle the replacement refs completely blew it. Watch the video if you haven’t already seen it.

One would think after that kind of embarrassment the league might want to get its regular officials back on the field. According to SI’s King, not so. “And though an impartial view of the dispute would draw the conclusion that Monday night’s embarrassment in Seattle would push the league toward making a deal immediately, I don’t see signs that the NFL is caving today.”

Sally Jenkins at the WaPo puts the blame squarely on the Commissioner’s Office, saying he owed it to his league, the players and the fans to at least have a sensible backup plan in mind once he and his owner-employers decided to lock out the refs.

Regardless of right or wrong in the labor dispute with officials, the league is guilty of gross malpractice: Before they locked out the refs, they should have made sure some replacements were halfway decently trained.

I’d say at this point the league and Goodell have gotten themselves into a box. They’re going to look like idiots no matter what they do, so I suspect they’ll continue to play hardball with the ref’s union and hope nothing even more calamitous happens. If I were a player, after seeing what has happened so far (Jenkins again: “Matt Schaub losing part of an ear, Tony Romo almost losing his head, Darrius Heyward-Bey knocked unconscious and hospitalized with a neck injury after lying on the field like a broken doll . . .”) I’d be tempted to call in sick.