NFL players call on owners to end 'embarrassing' referee lockout that's compromising player safety

The NFL Players Association is calling on the league to end its referees lockout, and accompanied that call with a withering denunciation of the lockout. The letter, coming from the NFLPA's 12-member executive committee, details safety concerns that could lay the groundwork for the players to ultimately refuse to play while the lockout is ongoing'their collective bargaining agreement does not allow them to strike but does allow them to refuse to play if doing so would compromise their safety.

Your decision to lock out officials with more than 1,500 years of collective NFL experience has led to a deterioration of order, safety and integrity.  This affirmative decision has not only resulted in poor calls, missed calls and bad game management, but the combination of those deficiencies will only continue to jeopardize player health and safety and the integrity of the game that has taken decades to build. [...]

It is lost on us as to how you allow a Commissioner to cavalierly issue suspensions and fines in the name of player health and safety yet permit the wholesale removal of the officials that you trained and entrusted to maintain that very health and safety. It has been reported that the two sides are apart by approximately $60,000 per team. We note that your Commissioner has fined an individual player as much in the name of 'safety.'  Your actions are looking more and more like simple greed.

As the NFLPA letter notes, the past week has brought "embarrassing" headlines thanks to the scab officials, from a scab who told Philadelphia Eagles running back LeSean McCoy that he needed him on his fantasy team (NFL refs aren't allowed to play fantasy football) to a scab removed from officiating a New Orleans Saints game after he posted pictures of himself in Saints gear on Facebook.

While the teams and coaches have been told not to criticize the lockout or the officiating it produces, serious frustration has come through at times. Additionally, former officials and players have been blunt in their criticism. For instance, the father of Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III has said he believes poor officiating allowed an opposing player to kneel on and bruise RGIII's leg after a play had ended, and:

... former NFL official Jerry Markbreit told USA TODAY Sports Friday that he saw a skirmish in Thursday night's New York Giants at Carolina Panthers game that replacement officials allowed to continue when veteran officials would have stepped in and seized immediate control.

Last week, Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young was blunt in his assessment that:

Everything about the NFL, now - it's inelastic for demand. There's nothing that they can do, to hurt the demand for the game. So the bottom line is, they don't care. Player safety doesn't matter, in this case because in the end, you're still going to watch the game. We're all going to complain and moan and gripe, and say it's'all these problems. All the coaches will say it; the players will say it. Doesn't matter'let them eat cake.

NFL management and the NFL Referees Association did negotiate briefly last week, only to once again break off over the league's insistence that the officials give up their defined benefit pensions.

Sign our petition calling on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league's billionaire owners to stop locking out experienced referees out of what the NFLPA is calling "simple greed."

(Full text of NFLPA letter below the fold.)