We've been listening for three weeks now to almost every NFL broadcast team and sportswriter complain endlessly about the awful job the NFL's replacement refs are doing officiating professional football games, and I for one am getting a bit weary of it.
Sure the replacement officials are struggling. Sure they're slowing down the game and making bad calls, although I remember a lot of complaints about the officiating abilities of the regular refs, too.
But what's the alternative? Do those who're complaining so loudly expect the NFL to give in to the locked out officials' demands? That won't happen. Do they expect the regular refs to meekly eat crow and accept the owners' last offer? I doubt that'll happen either. So, the only alternative is for everybody to just accept the fact that the game is going to be less skillfully officiated than it otherwise would be and just shut up about it.
After all, with all the criticism these replacement guys have been getting I wouldn't blame them if they just said they're not going to take it anymore and just quit. Then there'd be no football season at all. How happy would the coaches, players, and fans be then? All the people who've been telling the substitutes how bad they are, how incompetent they are, how much they "stink," would turn on a dime and start begging them to come back on the job. They'd be grovelling in front of these guys, offering abject apologies for the way they criticized them over the first three weeks of the season and pleading with them to return to the field so that the fans can get their weekly football fix and the players and television networks can get their exorbitant paychecks.
The desperation that'd suddenly beset all these people if the replacement refs chose to walk off the field would be fun to watch. It'd serve them right.