EDELSTEIN: Lingerie League fired these guys,
In the annals of “sentences you never thought you’d ever read,” the following has to rank right up there. Ready? Here it comes … The Lingerie Football League (LFL) told Deadspin.com Tuesday that a handful of replacement NFL officiating crews were previously fired from the LFL for on-field incompetence.
To be clear: The Lingerie Football League — which is exactly what it sounds like — fired a bunch of lousy referees and now those same referees are working a replacement refs in the NFL, blowing calls, losing control of the players, turning America’s most popular sport into a joke.
In fact, things are so bad — do I need to rehash the end of the Packers-Seahawks game? — I think NFL fans should storm the NFL offices, grab Commissioner Roger Goodell, throw shoulder pads and a slinky bra-and-panty set on him, and force him to play tailback in a few Lingerie Football games. That should be punishment enough for the way he’s handling this referee lockout.
Terrible, terrible job, as just about the entire sporting universe agrees.
Except … the referees aren’t entirely innocent here.
The NFL wants to hire about 20 more referees, and use them to replace other refs who the league feels are doing a lousy job. In other words, blow a pass interference call one Sunday afternoon, and you may find yourself benched the following weekend.
The referees are horrified at this prospect, but as a fan, this sure seems like a decent enough idea. These guys — they make an average of $149,000 a year — do this on a part-time basis, and why shouldn’t the NFL make sure they’ve got their best guys out there? (There are other sticking points in the negotiations to be sure, like the NFL wanting to ditch the referee’s current pension plan and the normal back-andforth about salaries.)
So while the referees have their own issues, it’s clear to just about everyone — including sexy women who wear lingerie while playing football — that the locked-out NFL referees now have the upper hand. In fact, the NFL is really handless at this point. It’s over. You would think the one-two punch of the Monday Night Football game being decided on an obviously blown call followed by the Lingerie Football League alerting the world they fired a bunch of the replacement refs because they couldn’t tell a holding call from an innocent grope would force Goodell and the NFL to bow down to the locked-out referees.
But … I’m not holding my breath. After all, the NFL makes about $9 billion a year and television ratings are up so far this season. The league isn’t losing one dime over the referee lockout. So what will happen? As with most labor disputes, the two sides will probably eventually come to some understanding, but I wouldn’t be surprised if neither side blinks for a long time. For the record, I’d love to be proved wrong immediately. I don’t want NFL games — and by extension, and even more importantly, my Fantasy Football games — being decided by ex-Lingerie football officials. (How is it the Lingerie Football League isn’t the most popular sport in the world? I need an inquiry on this one.)
Anyway, I think the only thing that will break Goodell is if the players themselves say “enough.” If the players union said they were keeping their members off the field because of safety fears
— which would be a legitimate enough complaint — then the NFL would have to back down.
Until that happens … you know what? You’ve got to check out the LFL website. These women are hot, tough, ultra-competitive and wearing lingerie. My train of thought has been derailed.