The NFL Needs Full-Time Referees

The National Football league is a multi-billion dollar organization with one major flaw: refereeing. There are games every season where the refs alter the outcomes by making bad calls and calls that are flat-out wrong.

As it stands right now, the NFL’s refs are flown in every weekend from wherever they work Monday through Friday to the location of the game to do their worst. Most have them have less than stellar understandings of all of the rules of the game and because of this, they wind up costing teams games and Las Vegas money.

In Week 11 the Pittsburgh Steelers and the San Diego Chargers played in the only football game to ever end with a score 11-10. The real score should have been 18-10, Steelers. Why the last second change in the score? The refs. A lateral that was batted and picked up by the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu was called dead after review by the refs, citing it as an illegal forward pass (once you go past the line of scrimmage you can only lateral sideways or backwards). The NFL later apologized for this after even further review announcing that the refs had made a mistake - a mistake that cost Las Vegas $66 million.

With the money that the NFL brings in they can easily afford to have full-time referees that are constantly being taught and retaught the rules as well as how to handle certain situations on the field. What’s the point of calling a holding penalty on the right offensive tackle when the play executed was a run up the left side, a play where that right tackle had absolutely no part in the outcome? The refs need to learn what indisputable evidence really means and stop making dumb calls or make-up calls for missing a chance to call a prior penalty. It’s absolutely asinine for the NFL, with the money they have not to improve the league that much more with full-time refs.