TO: Owners of NFL Teams

FROM: NFLPA Executive Committee

DATE: September 20, 2012

RE: Your Lockout of the NFL Referees and the Negative Impact on Football

The NFL Players Association Executive Committee is calling on you to end the lockout of our referees. We believe there is substantial evidence that you have failed in your obligation to provide as safe a working environment as possible.

Your decision to lock out officials with more than 1,500 years of collective NFL experience has led to a deterioration of order, safety and integrity. This affirmative decision has not only resulted in poor calls, missed calls and bad game management, but the combination of those deficiencies will only continue to jeopardize player health and safety and the integrity of the game that has taken decades to build.

As we predicted and explained to you weeks ago, the removal of the veteran officials from regular season games left a group of your replacements who have proved to be incapable of keeping pace with the speed of the game. Coaches and players have complained of numerous errors and failures including: erratic and missed calls on egregious holds and hits, increased skirmishes between players and confusion about game rules. Many replacements have lost control of games due to inexperience and unfamiliarity with players and rules.

The headlines are embarrassing: a scab working a game despite having been on the payroll of one of the teams, another who was assigned to referee a team he publicly supported on Facebook, and one who is a professional poker player when you propose even more stringent player rules on gambling.

It is lost on us as to how you allow a Commissioner to cavalierly issue suspensions and fines in the name of player health and safety yet permit the wholesale removal of the officials that you trained and entrusted to maintain that very health and safety. It has been reported that the two sides are apart by approximately $60,000 per team. We note that your Commissioner has fined an individual player as much in the name of "safety." Your actions are looking more and more like simple greed. As players, we see this game as more than the "product" you reference at times. You cannot simply switch to a group of cheaper officials and fulfill your legal, moral, and duty obligations to us and our fans. You need to end the lockout and bring back the officials immediately.

We are all men who love and respect this game and believe that it represents something beyond just money. For our teammates, our coaches and our fans who deserve better, vote to end this lockout now.

I mentioned in Bears/Rams chat that the NFL Players Union should walkout on the league until the ref lockout ends, some said that idea was stupid

I mentioned in Bears/Rams chat that the NFL Players Union should walkout on the league until the ref lockout ends, some said that idea was stupid, my justification was that the replacement refs create an unsafe working environment. While I doubt they would stage a walkout, the NFLPA sent a letter to the NFL owners:

Yeah, that was me. AND IT IS GOSH DARNIT!

I mentioned in Bears/Rams chat that the NFL Players Union should walkout on the league until the ref lockout ends, some said that idea was stupid, my justification was that the replacement refs create an unsafe working environment. While I doubt they would stage a walkout, the NFLPA sent a letter to the NFL owners:

This is ridiculous. Do you think that there are more serious injuries due to the replacement refs?

Do I think that the replacement refs mean more injuries? No
Do I think that the replacement refs can create an unsafe working environment due to their negligence? Yes. For example. look at last night's game...the environment and feeling around the game was charged to say the least and the replacement refs were fueling the fire rather than defusing the situation.
However, more importantly, I think the NFLPA could leverage this to threaten a walkout and that would put pressure on the owners to get the deal done with the refs and that would be the end goal.

Name 1 NFL player who has been injured in a football fight or scuffle?

Name 1 NFL player who has been injured in a football fight or scuffle? The environment & feeling around lots of NFL games is "charged", no matter who the refs are.
My NFL viewing enjoyment hasn't changed at all because of the replacement refs, but I wonder why the NFL owners have taken such a hard line stance when the amount of money on the table is peanuts. The distraction doesn't seem worth it.

They're almost as unsafe to the players safety as a bounty system employed by the players to hurt other players.

What exactly is the equivalency here? Goodell treated the bounty case like a crime against humanity. He's treating the officials' lockout like business as usual.

I just find it a little ironic that the NFLPA is bitching about player safety when it was in fact their own players who participated in a fucking bounty program designed to intentionally hurt other players for pocket change money. Someone said it in an earlier post, they could give 2 shits about safety as long as the money is going in their pockets not the owners. Owners would get their 2 extra games a year quite easily if they offered each player say, 125k extra for those 2 games in addition to their regular salary.

I have heard a few people mention this..I see nothing that could back this up...the refs have no bearing on the players safety.

Of course they do. Obviously throwing a flag on a late hit or a roughing call is an ex post facto act that doesn't ameliorate the effects of the particular hit in question, but it polices the game and keeps it from descending into a series of knee-chopping, helmet-crushing cheap shots--like, say, Pittsburgh-Oakland.

The scabs can also do plenty of direct damage, like the boob who threw his hat into the end zone and was lucky he didn't shred every ligament in Kevin Ogletree's body:

Or the official who threw the flag that hit that Browns player in the eye a few years back and permanently disabled him.

Or the official who threw the flag that hit that Browns player in the eye a few years back and permanently disabled him.

The decision by the NFL owners to lockout the referees jeopardizes your health and safety. This decision to remove over 1,500 years of collective experience has simply made the workplace less safe.

It is the NFL’s duty to provide a workplace that is as safe as possible. The League will want fans, the media and sponsors to talk only about ‘the product’ on the field. We are not product.

While the focus today is about a blown call and the outcome of one football game, our focus as a family of players is and will remain squarely on workplace safety.
Contrary to some reports, we are not crossing any picket line. The referees are not on strike. The Owners locked them out.

We are actively reviewing any and all possible actions to protect you.