Roger – Over and Out

Roger, this stubborn little stand-off needs to be over, and its time to get these guys out of here. Remove them from judging the highest level of football, and the most popular sport in our nation. Feel free to allow them to go back to where they came from – officiating Allan Hancock games.

What is the whole lockout of the NFL officials about anyway? What any professional disagreement between two sides is usually always about – money. And with the NFL reporting record revenues year after year after year, what’s the hold up here?

What needs to be understood is that it’s not all on Roger Goddell. The commissioner serves at the behest of the owners. He is in effect the employee of the owners, so fundamentally the buck literally stops with them, not him. But in no way can the commissioner not suggest to ownership that what is happening on the field is shredding away the integrity of the game, little by little by little.

Is it about upholding the integrity of the game or is it about being stingy with a little bit of money? Obviously its about greed. And what is the cost of this greed? Turning the most principled, ethical and virtuous sports league in our nation into a circus.

And what may be most embarrassing to the NFL about the whole situation is that people are tuning in not to see a quality product – which is what made the league as popular as it has become, but rather to see what kind of debacle will happen next. People are still tuning in alright, but they are they are tuning in now for all the wrong reasons – to see the equivalent of a reality TV show or a WWE match, not a football game.

How about player safety? Hasn’t that been an integral point importance since Goddell took the reins from Paul Tagliabue in 2006? Wasn’t that a major point of contention when the players and owners were working out their differences during this most recent lockout of the NFLPA?

It is clear and transparent that it isn’t about player safety. Having division III, junior college and high school officials working NFL games is about the most dangerous thing that could possibly be done in regards to protecting the players.

It’s the equivalent of having a junior life guards watch over a swimming pool filled with adapted-aquatic seniors or people with disabilities. It’s the same thing as having mall security guards thrown into a state penitentiary to handle the inmates. Plain and simple, one thing just doesn’t go with the other and it is being proven to be beyond hasty and reckless.

The bottom line – I see the debacle in Seattle as the straw that broke the camel’s back. If the recent news and speculation about developments between the two sides are any indication of the near future, we might not be too far away from getting some order back to this great game of ours.

Let’s hope for the sake of doing what makes sense, what is logical and what is just straight-up the right thing to do, a deal gets done soon. Its just too bad nothing ever really seems to end up about those things these days, does it?