NFL Refs: Call it Maybe

It looks like I picked a good year to give up NFL football, resigning from my fantasy league. The game has become too violent, with too many thug athletes, and now inept officiating.

Disclosure: I did watch the last quarter of MNF last night...a thing of beauty, pure poetry: the Packers coach (not) whining and Aaron Rodgers looking like the winsome 40 year-old virgin at his post-game presser after the team from Wisconsin got jobbed by non-union refs. Karma.

Maybe Roger Goodell should add Scott Walker to the labor negotiation team.

APM's Marketplace estimates that last night's blown call  will cost the town of Green Bay millions of dollars when adding the lost revenue of a home play-off game with concessions, parking, hotels, etc. And that's not including the perhaps quarter of billion dollars that were transacted in sports books.

According to Jonathan Mahler at Bloomberg, the referees want an increased salary and to continue their defined benefit plan, which would cost a few million dollars-- a mere "rounding error" to the $9 billion NFL. As Mahler points out, this is not a dying Midwestern city, it's the most popular sport in the wealthiest nation on earth.

The NFL will cave, as they should, after all this is football we're talking about, not just whiney school teachers.