It’s winter, in Wisconsin residents learn how to heat the locks on cars left outside in the cold to gain entry when the keyhole is frozen shut.

It is an art, but only necessary if you leave your car outside in the dead of winter.

The National Football League relationship with officiating their games is like a car left to absorb the punishment of a winter freeze outside. Instead of bringing their officiating into the garage, that is hiring full time officials that are at the top of their game and spend twelve months a year honing their craft, they allow a group of men and women who have other full-time jobs accept the gig of officiating on the weekend.

In the early days of the NFL, which has now been around for more than 100 years, referees were often athletes who loved the game and didn’t have the attributes to play it … so they refed it. By the 1950’s, the NFL searched for the refs who did the best job in the college ranks and offered them a chance to earn extra cash officiating their games on Sunday.

Now, 70 years later, the same system is in place.

And what does the league do? They keep adding technology and rules to allow bad calls to be overturned while still leaving the most glaring weakness in place, incompetent refs. One must ask how an obvious facemask infraction which by 2024 rules is still not a reviewable play could be missed? What was more important to the ref on the field than watching the quarterback with the ball having his head jerked by a defender?

Last week, a pair of plays in Kansas City were the latest to prompt a conversation for rule changes. Early in the game, on a key third down, Chiefs Quarterback Patrick Mahomes acted like he was mugged and baited the ref into throwing a roughing the passer penalty. Fifteen yards and a first down instead of a punt for Andy Reid’s squad. That botched call led to a Chiefs score. Later in the game, Mahomes tried to bait the defenders into hitting him near the sideline to gain another roughing penalty. The refs didn’t fall for it this time and now there's a conversation to put in a rule that became necessary in the National Basketball Association a couple years ago to outlaw flopping.

So, was the game fixed for the Chiefs?

I think not. What we have here is incompetence, and incompetence knows no side.

But it sure looked like the official in Buffalo on Sunday night had a preference for the home team. Another third down play late in the first half from the 30-yard-line that resulted in an incomplete pass. It would have set up a 48-yard field goal attempt, which was a dicey proposition on a freezing Highmark Stadium night.

Instead, a bogus pass interference call against the Ravens. Replays show that there was contact between the two players, but whether the offending party could have been the offense or defense was debatable, no call was clearly the right decision. The official on the play hesitated for a moment, then threw his flag, and then determined the offending party was the Ravens.

First down Bills at the 12-yard-line and three plays later a touchdown to advance their halftime lead from four points to 11.

The game ended on a missed two-point conversion with the Bills leading by two points.

A few years ago, the NFL tried to fix their problems with pass interference calls, a judgement decision that seems to bend in the wind. This was in response to one of the most obvious bad calls in the game’s history involving the Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints in the 2018 NFC Championship Game. An oh so obvious mugging of a receiver before the ball arrived should have resulted in a pass interference call and first down for Drew Brees and company near the goal line.

Instead, nothing was called. The Saints were forced instead to try a field goal which gave them a three-point lead but allowed the Rams enough time to come back and kick a tying field goal in regulation and go on to win the game in overtime. Rams off to Super Bowl LIII, and the league into meetings to try and fix the obvious problem.

The solution was to allow pass interference calls to be challenged. The result, challenges were plentiful and soon the league decided to not honor any of them and by mid-season coaches knew challenging a pass interference call was useless and cost them a challenge and timeout.

The next year, the ability to challenge pass interference calls was eliminated.

This is like offering new ways for residents of La Crosse to heat their frozen locks to gain access to their cars left outside in the dead of winter. While I suggest garaging your automobiles, if the opportunity is available, would be a much better solution to fix the problem.

The league using refs that have other full-time jobs is akin to leaving their car outside in the winter. In this case, a parallel to moving the cars into a garage would be to employ full time officials, in the prime of their athletic years, working twelve months a year to become the very best professionals available.

I’m exasperated by the league figuring out how to cover for bad calls with technology, instead of correcting at the root of the problem, which is incompetent part-time officials.

This weekend, four teams that have earned the right to play in the league’s Championship Games based on their excellence should have their results dictated by equally competent officials. Unfortunately, like the Saints loss in the 2018 season, one or both of this year’s Super Bowl participants may advance based on incompetence instead of excellence.