The NFL should have full-time game officials. That’s a given. But the NFL refuses to give even an inch on the issue, because it would cost a mile-high pile of money to make it happen.
Beyond properly compensating current part-time, part-year employees for full-time, year-round efforts, the NFL would have to offer these officials enough to get them to give up primary employment that comes with far less accountability than working as a game official does.
NFL officials are constantly graded and judged. That creates pressure and stress. Hit enough of a rough spot and/or slip into a slump, and that could be it.
Currently, officials have their main jobs to fall back on. If they go all in with their NFL gigs, they give up those safety nets.
And so, if the NFL doesn’t offer enough to get officials to give up their current primary jobs and the security that comes with them, some officials might decide not to embrace full-time employment, ostensibly depriving the NFL of competent officials.
Not everyone has that concern. One high-level team executive has no qualms about officials choosing to go.
“These guys are not good enough for us to worry about losing them,” the source said, pointing out that they already make a full-time wage for part-time work.
That’s a strong opinion, the kind that we typically don’t share. But it indeed comes from a high-level executive with no reputation for hyperbole, and it illustrates the feelings that are held by people in positions of authority and influence.
The game officials are represented by a union. It would be interesting to know what the union thinks about the prospect of full-time employment. Given that they currently are being paid pretty well for part-time work and likely would end up with a full-time salary that pays far less per hour when considering total time investment, the officials are likely fine with having a primary job and a very-well-paying second gig.
Fans shouldn’t be fine with that. The officiating necessarily would be better if the officials were exclusively and entirely devoted to the craft/profession of officiating. That’s obvious.
But not obvious enough, apparently, to get the NFL to do anything about it.