Brees: Replacement refs are an 'embarrassment'

[Stranger]

Drew Brees: Replacement refs are an 'embarrassment'
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap100000 ... arrassment

By Marc Sessler
Around the League Writer
Published: Sept. 25, 2012 at 09:20 a.m.
Updated: Sept. 25, 2012 at 10:18 a.m.

Even prior to Monday night's drama, frustration surrounding the shaky performance of the NFL's replacement officials had reached a fever pitch. Three games in, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees has seen more than enough to draw a conclusion.

"There's definitely a lack of confidence in what's going to get called and what's not going to get called," Brees told ESPN Radio before "Monday Night Football." "... You know, they're just not prepared to be in this situation. The game is so fast, and the level that all of them were at and now are at -- it just doesn't even compare. You know, I think it's getting to a point where it's pretty horrendous and it's an embarrassment to the league and the way it's being conducted."

Brees' comments came hours before Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson's final pass against the Green Bay Packers was determined to be a touchdown by one official and an interception by another. That marked the game's most egregious error in a festival of gaffes.

"I love this league and love the game of football, but tonight's debacle hurts me greatly," Brees tweeted after Monday's game. "This is NOT the league we're supposed to represent."

Brees wasn't done, sending out another ref-related tweet Tuesday. "Ironic that our league punishes those based on conduct detrimental. Whose CONDUCT is DETRIMENTAL now?"

The league finds itself in an interesting situation. The prime-time schedule was expanded this season to parade out more nationally televised games than ever before. In another year, that would be touted as a victory, but the replacement refs have stumbled hardest in these widely seen affairs. There's no going back after last night, and this conversation isn't going away.

 

[Stranger]

Brees wasn't done, sending out another ref-related tweet Tuesday. "Ironic that our league punishes those based on conduct detrimental. Whose CONDUCT is DETRIMENTAL now?"

The TV broadcasters will make the NFL pay for this "destrimental conduct", and they will pay big, no less than hundreds of millions is my guess. No way Disney, Direct TV and others are going to pay full contract price for this garbage the NFL is putting on prime time this season... no way.

 

[-X-]

Brees wasn't done, sending out another ref-related tweet Tuesday. "Ironic that our league punishes those based on conduct detrimental. Whose CONDUCT is DETRIMENTAL now?"

The TV broadcasters will make the NFL pay for this "destrimental conduct", and they will pay big, no less than hundreds of millions is my guess. No way Disney, Direct TV and others are going to pay full contract price for this garbage the NFL is putting on prime time this season... no way.

Do you think maybe it could work in reverse too?

Meaning, more and more people are tuning into ESPN (Disney) just to see what kind of snafu will happen next. In fact, I'm willing to bet their web hits have increased 10 fold already. They could actually be MAKING money off of this fiasco.

 

[Stranger]

Brees wasn't done, sending out another ref-related tweet Tuesday. "Ironic that our league punishes those based on conduct detrimental. Whose CONDUCT is DETRIMENTAL now?"

The TV broadcasters will make the NFL pay for this "destrimental conduct", and they will pay big, no less than hundreds of millions is my guess. No way Disney, Direct TV and others are going to pay full contract price for this garbage the NFL is putting on prime time this season... no way.

Do you think maybe it could work in reverse too?

Meaning, more and more people are tuning into ESPN (Disney) just to see what kind of snafu will happen next. In fact, I'm willing to bet their web hits have increased 10 fold already. They could actually be MAKING money off of this fiasco.

Well, perhaps EPSN's web traffic has increased, but I can't see how TV broadcaster affiliates & TV advertisers are going to tolerate this substandard product.... and that's where the big bucks is... the billions. So, justified or not, Disney's lawyers are going to be playing hardball with the NFL demanding a payment rate comensurate with this current TV product, and this is significantly less than what they've signed up for and what has been delivered in the past.

No matter how you cut it, the NFL has most clearly created a huge shit storm for itself, and it has no one to blame but it's own execs at NYC HQ.

 

[-X-]

Brees wasn't done, sending out another ref-related tweet Tuesday. "Ironic that our league punishes those based on conduct detrimental. Whose CONDUCT is DETRIMENTAL now?"

The TV broadcasters will make the NFL pay for this "destrimental conduct", and they will pay big, no less than hundreds of millions is my guess. No way Disney, Direct TV and others are going to pay full contract price for this garbage the NFL is putting on prime time this season... no way.

Do you think maybe it could work in reverse too?

Meaning, more and more people are tuning into ESPN (Disney) just to see what kind of snafu will happen next. In fact, I'm willing to bet their web hits have increased 10 fold already. They could actually be MAKING money off of this fiasco.

Well, perhaps EPSN's web traffic has increased, but I can't see how TV broadcaster affiliates & TV advertisers are going to tolerate this substandard product.... and that's where the big bucks is... the billions. So, justified or not, Disney's lawyers are going to be playing hardball with the NFL demanding a payment rate comensurate with this current TV product, and this is significantly less than what they've signed up for and what has been delivered in the past.

No matter how you cut it, the NFL has most clearly created a huge shit storm for itself, and it has no one to blame but it's own execs at NYC HQ.

TV broadcasters care about ratings. My bet is that the ratings, because of this, has either stayed lateral or has increased. I'm also willing to bet they could give a squirt about the quality of the product as long as their Nielsen ratings don't suffer as a result. Only the NFL has a vested interest in the quality of the product, IMO.

And for all the blustering we fans do about "boycotting the NFL", I'm willing to put in even more of my hard-earned that not a single fan actually does it. People are fascinated by wreckage, and people like to be pissed about things. This satisfies a multitude of sins, I think.

 

[Stranger]

TV broadcasters care about ratings. My bet is that the ratings, because of this, has either stayed lateral or has increased. I'm also willing to bet they could give a squirt about the quality of the product as long as their Nielsen ratings don't suffer as a result. Only the NFL has a vested interest in the quality of the product, IMO.

And for all the blustering we fans do about "boycotting the NFL", I'm willing to put in even more of my hard-earned that not a single fan actually does it. People are fascinated by wreckage, and people like to be pissed about things. This satisfies a multitude of sins, I think.

Well, you bring up good points and maybe right about ratings, I guess we will know in a few days when the ratings are published in the TV trades.

But let's hope that this is not the case, because the product that we all love will be turned into a version of the World Wide Federation of Wrestling, and that's a disastrous outcome, and will eventually turn fans away from the game.

 

[JdashSTL]

And for all the blustering we fans do about "boycotting the NFL", I'm willing to put in even more of my hard-earned that not a single fan actually does it. People are fascinated by wreckage, and people like to be pissed about things. This satisfies a multitude of sins, I think.

Ive seen a few folks entertained by this on Twitter, and every week the refs have gotten increasingly worse (this terrifies me). Im sure theres some Packer fans disgusted with this and thinking about not watching next week, but how many are looking to feel better by seeing them face the 0-3 Saints? This Packer squad should have a massive chip on their shoulder now.

 

[Stranger]

Well X, according to this LATimes article, you may be right.

The NFL is a habit America just can't kick
Fans may be outraged by bad officiating and other issues, but come the weekend they'll be back in front of the TV. We're hooked and NFL knows it. That's why things never change.

Bill Plaschke
September 26, 2012

Go ahead. Stop watching the NFL. I dare you.

Go on, change the channel. Live up to all the threats I've read on Twitter pages, the ranting I've seen in the blogs, the national cries for a fan boycott that would hasten the end to this zebra madness. Start ignoring NFL games on Thursday night and continue through next Monday night, paying no attention to anything on television remotely resembling a professional game being officiated by amateurs.

Blow off the national pastime, spurn its sponsors and partners, send this week's television ratings into a nose dive, the numbers plopping directly on the manure-covered shoes of Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Right. Never happen. You won't do it. I won't do it. We can't do it. We can't take our eyes off the one league that is perfectly suited to the modern American lifestyle, and the folks who run this league know it.

The reason NFL owners have had the nerve to lock out regular officials and cause constant chaos is because they can. The reason they are willing to damage the integrity of their product is because they know they're not damaging the integrity of their business.

They've got us, and they know it. They run the most-watched league in this country — nothing else is even close — and they know that even a little unfairness isn't going to change that. If anything, the officiating controversies in the season's first three weeks have helped them. Witness Sunday night's game between the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens, which attracted an average of eight million more viewers than the competing Emmy Awards.

The NFL is so perfectly suited for television, it even overshadows a night honoring the best of television. The NFL is so perfectly positioned as mainly a once-a-week event on Sunday, millions of lives are planned around it. It is the most easily understood league for gamblers. It is the most easily managed league for fantasy players. It's the best sport to watch on weekends, the best sport to discuss during the week, and finishes its season with an event that deserves to be called Super.

And we're going to give all that up to protest the fact that bad officiating makes our favorite chaos more chaotic, and our favorite three hours last a little longer? Are you kidding me? Even on Monday night, one of the lowest points in league history was good for business. Immediately after the ESPN telecast of the Seattle Seahawks' wrongly being awarded a game-winning touchdown on the final play against the Green Bay Packers, ESPN's "SportsCenter" drew the largest audience in the history of "SportsCenter."

The NFL owners know this, and have long and shamefully capitalized on this. While their business is football, their game is extortion, and they've been doing it forever — using our love for their league as a weapon against us, fattening their pockets with all sorts of nonsensical behavior and daring us to do something about it.

You want to buy season tickets? You have to pay for meaningless exhibition games. You can't afford to support your team in person? Then you risk having your team blacked out on television. You don't want your tax money to support your local owner? Then you might lose your team entirely.

A form of that last ploy has been occurring in Los Angeles for more than 15 years, with the league using the vacancy here as a constant threat to fans in small markets such as Minnesota and Jacksonville. Of course, for this to work, the league has needed Los Angeles to play along, and admirably we have not, establishing that the NFL needs us more than we need the NFL, the first time that has happened anywhere in many years.

But even here, let's not kid ourselves. We may not need eight games a week in an expensive downtown palace, but Los Angeles fans embrace every moment on television, and every chance to go to Las Vegas for betting, and every fantasy league that fills our offices. Even though Los Angeles is far too sophisticated to believe it needs an NFL team for its self-worth, the ratings show that this is indeed one of the nuttiest NFL towns around.

We're hooked. America is hooked. The NFL owners are the dealers. They can cut their product in almost any fashion and we're buying. They can continue to lock out their officials in a labor dispute that is resulting in a substandard product because they know that while we say we care, we really don't. While America's sports fans have been apoplectic for 24 hours over the Monday night injustice, these same fans can't wait to see how it will all look when the Ravens host the Cleveland Browns on Thursday.

While we've spent these last hours running through the streets screaming, the owners have kept quietly leaning against a wall in an alley, smiling, waiting for us to return with shrugs and sheepish grins. This is still the NFL, they will say, extending their cheapened wares in unwavering hands. You want it or not?

They can ask the question, because they know the answer.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/football/ ... 777.column

 

[-X-]

Well X, according to this LATimes article, you may be right.

Well, that hardly ever happens. So I'll take it. :lol: