Would NFL officiating improve with full-time refs?
Andrew Siciliano, Jori Epstein and Frank Schwab debate if NFL officiating would actually improve with full-time refs. Check out the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
Also, and I'm an outlier here, I think, and Jory I think you're gonna fight me on this, I think the idea that we need full-time officials is a red herring.
I think it is totally irrelevant because are you telling me that in February and March and April that Joe Schmo being an accountant or a school administrator or an attorney is, is somehow affecting his performance on Sunday?
Or even on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday during the week, that it's affecting his performance on Sunday?
And if we make them full-time officials, are we gonna tell them that they are forbidden from having a daily job?
Like, in the off-season they are forbidden from plying whatever trade that they've worked their whole life to do and they put money in their pocket, they can't get extra income?
To me, I, like, the full-time officiating thing is a, is to me it's a nonsense argument.
Well, here's what I'd say, Andrew, and obviously you know this quite well because you're someone who does balance multiple jobs at once and has done that, but when someone has a full-time job that takes up the primary amount of their time and gets their primary responsibilities, that doesn't mean they can't have side gigs.
And I'm not saying the officials can't have side gigs.
I'm saying that the NFL should be investing enough hours into their development and training that they are getting paid like a full-time job, and thus are able to be there for the number of hours of the full-time job.
But don't just say, "We're gonna decrease the dead period where we can't talk to them and can't train them."
No, you have to compensate them accordingly for their time.
Sure.
My thing is, and I know we talked about flag football earlier in the week, and I'll have a story on Yahoo later this week about what the flag football and USA Football people think about, tackle football players, and kinda what we learned this week.
And, and it wasn't just a, "Oh, are you, do you have your quick twitch?"
and, "Oh, do you know how to pull a flag?"
A lot of it was, "Are you willing to put the time on task?"
And if the NFL wants players in the Olympics, they're gonna have to put time on task into flag 'cause it's not the same thing as tackle.
So I don't care if these people are officiating high school games or this or that, they need to have more time on ta- or I should say they will be better if they have more time on task.
Because the same way a quarterback is better at patt- pattern recognition of defenses if they've spent more time repping it, an official is going to be better at that quick reaction, here's what the call is, here's everything I need to take in at once, and here's how I need to understand the whole picture, if they've spent more time on it.
That's just how the human brain works, and that's how expertise and memory work.
And so when I hear the NFL on our call today say, "Oh, yeah, well, we have many more tools in the toolbox with replay assist to know it's not even only about what we're adding, we also have that ability to We already review scoring plays.
We already review turnovers and threaten this," I really don't think that's what it's about.
And yes, I think the NFL should be using technology, but I think the issue with the technology is not that they're not using it, it's that they don't have strong communication and consistent protocols between how NFL headquarters in New York work to replay assist up in the booth at the stadium and on the field.
And sometimes they communicate the calls and some of the crews don't.
So to me, it's the alignment on all of that that is the issue.
But I, I'm not gonna be convinced that more time on task would not make the officials better.
