The Argument – Braxton’s Buckeyes
September 26, 2012Chris Perez gag order in effect?
September 26, 2012
Hooters girls offer to ref next game (H/T Busted Coverage)
Everyone has been talking about the NFL replacement referees and the lockout, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it as well. It’s even gone so far that the Hooters girls are offering to ref your next game. It’s such a big issue in such a big league that it is being used for PR stunts. Obviously, they got the wrong call at the end of Monday Night Football. Obviously, the games have been slower as they’ve been less decisive in making decisions, but let’s go beyond the superficial stuff that is easy to scream about and obvious. Let’s talk about the real issue here which is the battle between the NFL referees and the NFL.
The quality of replacement referees has absolutely nothing to do with the crux of the fight between the NFL and the referees over pensions. This isn’t an unfamiliar fight to most Americans as pensions are a dying breed of retirement vehicle all over the country. I don’t want to get too financially technical here, but there are two basic kinds of retirement plans. One is defined benefit, like a pension, that guarantees a certain benefit at retirement. It will frequently be a percentage of the employee’s final salary depending on years served in a career. A defined contribution plan is one that doesn’t guarantee future benefits, but instead guarantees contributions into investments like a 401(k) during employment.
The pension system is obviously preferable to NFL referees because it provides predictability in retirement. A 401(k) contribution is nicer for the employer because it doesn’t put them on the hook to guarantee anything in the future. It is pretty logical that pension systems have disappeared with the unpredictability of the stock market. Companies could no longer safely get regular returns in the market and decided to contribute to retirement, but let employees manage their own risks.
Isn’t this just the NFL being greedy? They can afford it, right? Absolutely. The NFL can afford it ten times over. Even if the NFL wants to keep its foot down on the pension vs. 401k thing, they could easily afford to throw some additional money at the problem while still maintaining their financial principles. So, while I think the NFL is not being ridiculous to want to move away from the pension system, They probably should have just ponied up with a checkbook on the salary side to make the pension problem go away. Who knows though? Maybe the referees wouldn’t budge on this one issue.
According to reports though, the numbers look like this. According to NFL spokesperson Greg Aiello, “an experienced official could earn more than $200,000 a year by 2018” under the league’s proposal. On top of that, retirement contributions would have been roughly $20,000 per year. Using those two numbers, that means the employer retirement contribution is about 10%. Now stop and think if any of you has a 10% retirement match in your job, let alone a contribution. I’ve worked in big corporations where they matched each of the first 5% I was willing to save. I’ve also worked at companies that would match 3% for my first 5%. And those were matching scenarios. Here the NFL was going to contribute 10% all by themselves for a group of guys working part time, albeit in a super-high profile position.
10% seems totally fair. For the job and status of these guys, $200,000 per year seems stingy. Would any NFL owners even notice if that number doubled? The answer is obviously not. I understand the NFL fighting for principles and control over quality (isn’t that ironic?) in their fight with the referees labor union, but the position is important enough that it shouldn’t have come to this with those guys making so little. The NFL could have doubled it and at least saved themselves the level of debacle that occurred Monday night.
That’s not to say that the wrong call couldn’t have happened with regular NFL officials. It easily could have. The thing is, that with regular NFL officials, you say they screwed up and you move along. It’s only a three and four day story with replacements.
One final note, is that NFL players and coaches are almost all out of line right now. Regardless of the quality of officiating going on via replacement refs, there’s still no excuse for all the incidents from this past week. Bill Belichick, Jack Del Rio, Kyle Shanahan and the rest are all guilty of making this even worse than it had to be. One thing that stands true regardless of who is wearing the striped shirt is that they aren’t going to change calls, are trying their best, and should be treated with respect because of basic humanity.
All this extra-curricular garbage isn’t helping anyone and the whole game is worse for it.
41 Comments
Can anyone say touch football??? You’re hired!!! Back to reality now Goodell needs to put his league before his pride and get the real bozos back to work. They may have made their share of mistakes but nothing like we’ve been seeing the past three weeks especially this past Monday. Games are becoming increasingly difficult to watch as well.
The scab refs actually lost their right to being treated “with respect because of basic humanity” when they crossed the picket line. They are scabs & they have earned whatever comes their way, regardless of the accuracy, or not, of their calls on the field.
Scab cross picket lines in a strike – this is a lockout. I’m not sure you get the ‘basic humanity’ thing either.
I guess my stance is this: the pension system was collectively bargained and agreed to BY THE LEAGUE. The refs want that CBA to be upheld. The owners have changed their minds and no longer want to provide the pensions they agreed to. Which means the owners are reneging on a deal they made in good faith.
From what I understand, the refs aren’t demanding the pension system stay intact indefinitely. Only that those who were promised pensions when they began their employment (under a COLLECTIVELY bargained agreement) not have them taken away after the fact without their consent. It’s understood that new hires will be in a 401(k)-type system. But the league made promises to the existing guys, and they shouldn’t be let out of those promises, especially when, as you point out, they can afford to keep them several times over.
(I say this as an admittedly pinkie commie when it comes to labor relations, so take with several giant grains of pink himalayan, free-trade sea salt).
I always was suspicious of the way you wrote Stalin! Fire up the torches boys it’s time to Republican up in this piece!!! 😉
So nothing is negotiable upon renewal? Isn’t that why these things expire? It’s not like they lose all the value of the pension system. When one of my corporate overlords undid the pension system, it had an intrinsic value which I was given to roll over into a new retirement vehicle.
You’re advocating the adjustable-rate mortgage approach for pensions? “Sign up for this amazing pension! You’ll be set for life!!…….(in tiny print, halfway down the page) unless we change our minds in three years and decide to take them away.
I haven’t read the detail on the CBA, but I’m pretty sure NO pension includes the “unless we don’t feel like holding up our end of the bargain” language.
But really, that’s my point with regard to the new hires. You can revisit the issue with people you didn’t make the promise to and negotiate a new deal with them that doesn’t include pensions.
Either way: pensions are promises that employers make to lure good candidates. Taking them away from those who signed up for them is breaking a promise. All else is obfuscatory, IMO.
Can’t you two pick up the phone and have this conversation this is OUR place to discuss? j/k Corporate overlords, intrinsic…wow…type slower some of us have to look these things up. LET ME GET MY POPCORN!!!
Browns games are always difficult to watch, luckily we are not a bubble team this year…ahem Seattle…that the refs can really affect our season.
I am very glad to see this article. This morning I woke up and said to myself, sports discussions on the interwebs are just too civil, how can we spice things up? Then it hit me. Let’s through Collective Bargaining gasoline cans at the bonfire.
This comment thread is about to be the most epic flame war ever.
First off…I’m not sure the refs blew the call on Monday night. Does anyone remember that catch by the Alabama receiver where he reached around the defender for the touchdown catch? This has happened before.
Secondly, I find your “have YOU ever gotten 10%?” logic upsetting. Everyone is allowed to negotiate their compensation. As they say on the radio here in C-Bus, ‘let ’em live’.
The owners agreed to the pension…pay the men. Renegotiating labor deals is necessary when companies are struggling, and I find it upsetting when I see labor forces allow their coworkers to take the fall rather than all give a little.
However, the NFL is most definitely NOT struggling. Pay them what you agreed to pay them and move on before you lose any more dignity. Does Goodell want to here his name chanted with explitaves at the next Ravens game? Cuz that’s the next step.
Edit: HEAR his name
Edit again: expletives
Oy…
So, Tate wasn’t guilty of Offensive PI?
Yeah! Let’s go bust their kneecaps!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
unfortunately, i think it’s impossible to talk about this issue without getting into politics.
Can the NFL owners nut up and pay what the Refs want? Absolutely. As you said, they could probably double the amount and not notice it was gone.
But should they have to? That’s the gravamen of the issue. I think most opinions about the situation are rooted in that question.
most of the regulars here are pretty civil, though.
So Jackie Presser is alive… Andys also apparently living under an assumed name.
I was speaking of football in general but I agree with your first point which is why I try to watch as much of the other football games as possible.
Actually, we have seen the “real” refs make mistakes like we’ve seen the past few weeks. It’s just that we have replacement refs, so the story is bigger. The “mom test” is a good way to understand exactly how this is working. My mother, who knows nothing about sports, has heard about the replacement refs and their mistakes. When I point out that the regular guys have mistaken “heads” for “tails”, didn’t know which hand Testaverde had the ball in, and completely botched the biggest game on the planet (2006), she just goes “oh”. The refs have been infuriating us with their missed calls for decades. Now we have the ammo to go “see!”
The promise was to fund a system that has a value right this very second. Pensions have an intrinsic value based on a large amount of factors. Sorry if I think the NFL should be able to get out of it going forward, but I do… for an agreed-upon price. Plus, I’m pretty sure the existing liability will be fully funded and the NFL is going to follow all the contractual termination provisions that are likely written into the contracts. I did a little bit of research before I started writing this and generally when a plan is terminated, a corresponding annuity is purchased to make sure the plan will never default on its promises.
If you want to say it is in bad taste, OK. But this talk about “promises” seems really immature when we’re talking about contracts with expirations, etc. The plan promises contributions for as long as the deal is intact. There was an expiration on the CBA, so that’s where the promises end until new promises can be agreed-upon.
Again, I think the NFL should have to pay for the right to terminate the plan and implement something new, but you can’t force them to continue a retirement plan they don’t want to continue. I just don’t blame the NFL for not wanting to invite unpredictable future liabilities even if they can apparently afford this one without issue.
And that’s the real point. In the end, the NFL looks bad because they’re rolling in cash, and they should have thrown some of it at this problem. But the rest? For all I care, they could do away with retirement benefits entirely and just give the refs far more substantial salaries and tell them to figure it out. There’s a price for that solution too. I don’t know exactly what that is, but it’s just money we’re talking about here.
“However, the NFL is most definitely NOT struggling. Pay them”
I know there’s more to your quote, but just look at this. The NFL, even with replacement refs, is still making money hand over fist, and probably more people are going to watch now as the replacement ref story has moved beyond just nfl fans. If the NFL is not gaining a dollar in revenue from the real refs, why should they offer the latter more money?
Is your mother hot?
Oh yeah…that. That was definitely pass interference. I was mostly referring to the catch.
So you do, or don’t, want to have an actual discussion?
It sometimes amazes me and often times saddens me when I watch browns games then other NFL games. I try my best to keep them in two distant categories.
I smell what ur cookin’ I’ve often caught myself wondering aloud when watching other professional football teams especially on offense.
Maybe later ya see I ate what I thought was Indians food for lunch only it turns out the mobile cart was missing the “S” and well I’m doing my best impersonation of Ben Stiller in “Along Came Polly!”
that is not really the issue. the issue is that the NFL bookmakers do not want to have “guaranteed” money on their books moving forward that will continue to compile. it is the issue the auto industry ran into. in the 50s and 60s they were making so much money that the pension plans did not seem like a bad idea and the stock market was not as volatile.
the 70s and 80s saw the % of their budget going more and more to the pension plans to the point where other automaker companies without those budget lines were able to come in and cut them off at the knees on pricing and they responded by cutting prices (by cutting quality).
obviously, the NFL has less reason to be concerned from competition like that but their revenues could still go down for other reasons.
the issue isn’t if they can pay today. it’s if they can guarantee it will not be an issue in the future. all that being said, they should be able to pretty easily find a way to cut out the pensions over time where it makes the current officials happy (likely what the reported deal today has done).
Correction make that like Jim Carrey in “Pet Detective.”
even if the NFL stopped funding pensions moving forward, they would still legally be liable for the pensions that have been granted so far (or some agreed upon payout).
a referee that has been on the job for 10yrs would still have that 10yr pension + 401K contributions moving forward for instance.
edit: or as Craig noted those pension values could be rolled over into the new plan for a specific value. it might even be a choice of the referee which he does.
Absolutely agree, especially with the comparison. But I still say that the bookkeepers are noticing that the refs are not revenue enhancers in any way (unlike the autoworkers). Even if you are rolling around in money like Scrooge McDuck, it’s bad business to give money to somebody who won’t bring it back to you.
i think it’s been done fairly well here on commenting without pure politics. most of the below is people expressing their viewpoints rather than pure political talk-points, which is refreshing (outside of one comment below, but hey we cannot be perfect).
i largely agree. in some ways, the long-term viability could be called into some question if the referees were known to be a complete joke over a long period of time.
but, even with that, it is still a very small line item compared to the rest of the things that can affect the bottom-line.
What a ridiculous attitude. By virtue of trying to better themselves economically they’re now sub-human? No. Save the hyperbole.
The replacement referees suck real bad, but so do the normal officials.
You don’t want the refs bringing in money; the need to be impartial. There is a price /cost for the level of excellence required and the NFL had best value and appreciate hat quickly and ante -up. As we are seeing there is an exponential benefit- a domino effect so they really are more valuable.
No one is talking about the reason the refs are demanding all this is also because the league will not allow them to have regular, full-time jobs, and a lot of these guys make more in those jobs than they did being a ref before the renegotiations.
doesnt the president of the united states of america make 400,000 dollars a year? why does everyone need so much money?
Actually was the opposite. They made six figure doing this part time, and the nfl said they would be more willing to give if refs would be full time employees.
yes, I thought that the full-time referee option was shot down early in negotations by the NFLRA. personally, I think they should be fulltime (more time to review their work and work with teams in the offseason = better product overall)