"The NFL and the NFL Referees Association made enough progress in negotiations Tuesday night that the possibility of the locked-out officials returning in time to work this week's games has been discussed, according to sources on both sides. An agreement in principle is at hand, according to one source familiar to talks, although NFL owners have postured with a "no more compromise" stance. Although league sources said it would take a week to get the locked-out officials on the field, the NFLRA says its 121 referees have been trained on the new rules implemented last season, have already passed physicals or are prepared to pass physicals immediately. New official game uniforms designed by Nike are "hardly an obstacle," according to a source." http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8427652/locked-nfl-referees-return-early-week-sources
Done deal...will begin this weekend NFL officials agree to deal with league, will return this weekend According to ProFootballTalk.com, which cites a longtime official and supervisor, a deal has been signed and a crew will be in place Thursday night for the Browns-Ravens game. NFL replacement officials Lance Easley discusses the final play to the Packers-Seahawks game on the field Monday night in Seattle. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press / September 24, 2012) Officials' mistake proved costly to Los Angeles Rams in 1968 The NFL is a habit America just can't kick Las Vegas casino offers refund to Packers-Seahawks bettors By Sam Farmer September 26, 2012, 8:15 p.m. The deal is done: The regular NFL officials are coming back, according to ProFootballTalk.com. The NBC-owned webiste cites Jim Daopoulos, a longtime NFL official and supervisor of officials who joined NBC as an analyst this season, as saying the league and the NFL Referees' Assn. have signed a new deal. The report says a crew is being assembled to work Thursday night's game between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens and on Friday the regular officials will travel to Dallas to retrieve their equipment and receive their game assignments for Sunday and Monday. The same crews as last season will be working together this season. According to a report, the pension issue was resolved with the existing defined-benefit plan remaining in place for five years until the officials are rolled over into a 401(k) plan. Ending a lockout that lasted nearly four months -- and three weeks of pins-and-needles tension with replacements -- the NFL on Wednesday night reached a labor agreement with its officials, presumably in time for the regular crews to work this weekend’s games. The crisis reached a flashpoint Monday night, when the Green Bay Packers were denied a victory against the Seahawks in Seattle on the basis of a wrong call on a Hail Mary pass. That turned up the heat on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and team owners to find a solution that largely concerned whether the officials could maintain their defined-benefit pension plans. During the first three weeks of the regular season, the league came under heavy criticism from fans, players, and even normally friendly broadcast partners. “I hope it happens soon,” St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford said Wednesday. “I just don’t think it’s fair to the fans, I don’t think it’s fair to us as players to go out there and have to deal with that week in and week out.” The replacement officials were mostly culled from the small college, junior college and high school ranks. Unlike when replacements were used for Week 1 of the regular season in 2001, major college officials watched this labor fight from the sidelines, in support of their NFL officiating brethren. After news broke early Wednesday that a deal was at hand, Scott Green, a negotiator for the NFL Referees Assn., informed the officials in an email that the suggestion was premature and that talks were still underway. Goodell participated in the negotiations, which took place over four days last week, during the weekend, as well as marathon sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday. A federal mediator also assisted in the talks.
Strange how they will return tonight but not vote to ratify the agreement until Saturday...there must be some cause and effect to that if they vote it down although I have no idea what it would be.
This obviously ended up being a PR disaster for the NFL, and who knows what that might end up costing them indirectly. But from a direct economic point of view, from what I've read this final settlement is a gigantic win for the NFL. Specifically: (1) The biggest issue for the NFL was converting the defined benefit pension plan to a defined contribution (401(k)) plan. The league was willing to grandfather in the current officials under the old defined benefit plan, but the officials' union insisted that all officials stay on a defined benefit plan. What has ultimately happened is that all of the officials stay on the current system for for 4 years (or until the official reaches 20 years of service), and then ALL officials go to a 401(k) plan. This is a TREMENDOUS win for the league - they have basically controlled their pension costs completely starting in 2016. If the officials had accepted this from the start there would have never been a lockout. (2) The league wanted the right to start hiring fulltime officials. Starting next year they can. The union wasn't necessarily against that, but they demanded that those officials be paid very high salaries. I haven't seen any numbers yet that suggest that that has happened. (3) The league wanted to start having "spare" officials that could work games if they were unhappy with a current referee's performance. That has also happened (these are the "training and development" officials we're hearing about). The only thing I can see that the referees got was higher salaries, which was always the easiest thing for the NFL to agree to. I'd be willing to bet that right now there are a whole lot of NFL owners who are congratulating Goodell for having this turn out exactly as they hoped it would.
I don't think it's as clearcut a win as you're making it. The pensions don't convert into 401ks for another five years. Last I heard, the deal with the union was not so coincidentally five years long. To me it seems like they postponed that till the next negotiation to get what they wanted even more now, which was the extra refs and accountability.
