NFL Referees

Talent really does matter. That is the lesson of the replacement referees in the NFL.


Now, I don’t normally watch any football, and I’ve heard of this controversy, so I assume everyone else has too. The NFL is in a labor dispute with its referee’s union. The two sides are apparently far, far apart, because the NFL locked out the refs before the preseason started, months ago. To replace the regular refs, the NFL is using replacements from college and arena football.

There is a hierarchy to officiating. You start with grade school games, move on to high school, and then on to college games. In college, there is a whole sub hierarchy, based on the size of the school. Division I schools are the largest, and from what I can gather, most of the officials that referee those games are not crossing the picket line. So the NFL has gone down to the ranks of the referees for Division III colleges to get enough referees for their games.

The result, at least in terms of play, has been a disaster. The replacement refs are not catching or calling cheap shots by one player against another. Without penalties to restrain the players, the level of brutality has been increasing every week. They are also making bad calls on plays. This reached a peak in one of last week’s games, where what the refs called a game winning touchdown was clearly, upon reviewing the instant replay, actually an interception. Even after review, it was still called a touchdown.

The consensus is that the replacement refs lack both the experience and innate ability to referee games played at the level of skill, speed, and intensity of the pros.

The push of modern technology has been to reduce the skill content of work. Think of the cashier in a grocery store. She used to have to be really, really quick at hitting the keys on a cash register. Anybody can be trained to key in prices, but some people had faster hands than others. Being a fast and accurate checkout cashier was a skill, albeit a minor one. Two people doing the same job would be differentiated, not just by training and experience, but by talent.

Now, with bar code scanners, the accuracy is all in the computer. The cashiers are reduced to material handlers. The edge that talent can give you is vastly reduced. That is just one example, but the application of technology to simplify work is well documented. It even has a lot to do with the decline of the middle class. If anybody can do the job, then wage rates decline to the lowest common denominator.

My model for job training is that about 80% of any job can be reduced down to between 50 and 100 subroutines. The goal of training is to teach you those subroutines, and give you the chance to practice them in controlled conditions. After that, you need experience in a job to tell you which subroutine to apply in any situation. That covers about 15%. The last five percent of job performance is attributable to talent. Talent is what separates the high performers from the everyday performers.

What is clear from watching the replacement refs give out bad calls, or not call players for breaking the rules, is that the replacements probably aren’t even seeing the events on the field as they unfold. Watching the game on TV, with multiple viewing angles, replays, and slow motion, things seem very clear. For the refs on the field, there is a single viewpoint, there are a lot of bodies in motion, and they are moving very fast.

The replacements know how to do the job. They have years of experience at multiple levels of play. Yet they are still woefully inadequate. The difference can be attributed to the talent. When you’re playing for the pros, talent matters for everybody on the field, whether they’re Lions, Tigers, or ...  zebras.