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?