Stop us if you've heard this one before: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is being accused of arbitrarily handing out discipline as a public relations move. The latest person to make that charge is longtime official Scott Green, a former referee whose 23-year career incuding officiating three Super Bowls (XXXVI, XXXVIII and XLIV). Green wrote a piece for USA Today that is critical of Goodell and NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino. Green recalls a wild card game between the 49ers and Giants in the 2002 postseason when he missed a "key pass interference call" which would have offset another penalty and given the Giants one more play to possibly win the game (New York lost, 39-38). The mistake is still fresh in his mind, Green said, as he watches "former colleagues strive for impossible perfection." [ Yahoo Daily Fantasy Football: First place wins $100K in our $500K contest for Week 9 ] He notes that "the human element is not just part of the game, it’s a celebrated and embraced element," while adding that decisions made during games by players and coaches sometimes falls in the gray areas of the NFL rule book and case book of plays, which is 176 pages thick. "All that said, a few very visible errors in recent weeks has rightfully put NFL officiating in the public spotlight," Green writes. "The League is predictably handling the issue no differently than the others that characterize Commissioner Roger Goodell’s regime: arbitrary punishment of an individual for a fast public relations fix. It’s a reactive approach that may give some short-term satisfaction to one team’s fans, but it doesn’t address improvement." It's time to look at the big picture he said, and set his sights on Blandino. NFL Vice President of Officiating Dean Blandino works hard and earnestly wants to improve NFL officiating. He is a master of technologies and replay. But, Blandino has never officiated an NFL game. His view and understanding of the game and its officiating are exclusively through video, which is a far cry from being on-field with 22 large, fast and extremely skilled players colliding for three hours. Yet Blandino is now the sole decider of what is and isn’t a catch, of what calls will and won’t be overturned on replay. Every Sunday, Monday and Thursday, he sits in the NFL’s Command Center in New York watching video of key plays and “advising” referees on replay decisions. So what was Blandino looking at when the ball was batted out of the end zone in Seattle? Did he idly watch seconds tick away in the San Diego game when the clock should have been stopped? The only purpose of replay and the multimillion-dollar Command Center is to get calls right. But the one man with access to the screens and to the on-field officials stayed silent. The NFL has been content to say, “It’s not reviewable,” and move on. Hogwash! Less than 48 hours after the Steelers-Chargers game two weeks ago, I watched Game 5 of the ALDS, and MLB umpires were faced with an extremely unusual play. It may not have been “reviewable,” but you better believe the umpiring crew chief was on the headset to MLB’s Command Center. Ultimately, they got the call right which is what the players and fans deserve. Green, who served as president of the National Football League Referee Association from 2008-2013 and is currently on the board of directors for the National Association of Sports Officials, believes it's time for the evaluation system for officials to be updated, streamlining it from the three-day process it is now to one that identifies the handful of significant plays from an officiating standpoint in each game and having those plays broken down to see how they were handled. He also advocates for increased training, particularly for new officials, noting that the league has experienced a 20 percent turnover in officials over the last two years.
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