On replacements

On my way in to work this morning, I was listening to Steve Czaban, a local sportstalk personality who has a national show in the mornings.  Anyone who knows about him knows that he often has some, er, interesting opinions about the NFL and Roger Goodell.  Today the focus of his rant was the replacement referees, who have begun to officiate preseason games this week.  I have yet to see them in action, but from what I have heard and/or read, the discrepancy between their abilities and those of the regular NFL referees (who are currently locked out by the league) is considerable.  While the majority of fans, myself included, are often unsatisfied with the jobs that the refs do, I think that most would agree that it is not an easy job.  The regulars have many years experience with the NFL game, one which is played at a significantly faster pace than NCAA football, arena football, lingerie football, or the local pickup game.   As such, even though most of the refs have regular occupations besides their work for the NFL, they deserve appropriate compensation.  From where I sit, the NFL is being cheap.  For the amount of money that the league makes annually, I don't see how they could possibly be at that much of an impasse over the amount they are willing to raise the refs' salaries. 

There are seven officials per game, with up to 16 games played per week. That requires up to 112 referees for any given week of football, assuming that crews don't officiate more than one game per week (i.e. Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, etc).  I am not sure what the deal is with officials in the booth.  The salary range for an NFL ref is $25K-70K per year, with an average of about $27K (at least according to my internet research, which could certainly be wrong).  Multiplying that average by the number needed per week gives you $3,159,000 for the yearly salary.  I have no idea what the referees are requesting in the CBA negotiations, but even assuming they want a 25% increase in salary (which is a pretty significant raise by most people's standards), that is $789,750 out of a revenue of billions.  Adam "Pacman" Jones probably threw more money in the air when he "made it rain" at that strip club years ago.  Hell, even a 50% increase would be a drop in the ocean of ever-increasing NFL revenue.  Given the current league position on emphasizing player safety and continuing to improve the quality of the game, shouldn't league be happy to spend such a relatively small amount to be assured of getting the best refereeing possible?  Their willingness to lockout the officials over such a small amount of money is like a buyer canceling the purchase of a house because he wants the seller to foot the bill for cutting the lawn one last time.

In a word...cheap.