More attention is paid to officiating in the NFL than any other sport. And close calls on rules interpretations can make or break seasons, as the Buffalo Bills and Brandin Cooks found out this weekend. And veteran official and Fox Sports NFL rules analyst Mike Pereira is calling for the league to make a change.
One of the most difficult things to fathom about the NFL is that they do not have full-time officials. Instead, officials are only part-time, adding on their duties to properly adjudicate games watched by tens of millions of people to their real life commitments.
For a league that makes $24 BILLION in revenue, not committing what would essentially be a rounding error to funding full-time officials is mystifying. But Mike Pereira isn’t even calling for that. For a start, he at least wants the referees who lead each crew being made full-time in comments made last week to the Charlotte Observer.
“I think it’s time to look at full-time officials (the NFL has never had them; some other pro sports leagues do). Not everyone. But I do believe that the person that represents the crew in the field, the guy in the white hat, the referee — I think those 17 people should be full-time working together all year. Not going home in between games, but going to an officiating institute and breaking down all the games together, so the messages are consistent. … I’m not a fan of making everyone full-time, but make the referees full-time. To me, it’s time for that.”
To almost everyone outside the NFL league office, it sounds like a no-brainer. There are so many questions and headlines about officiating every week that anything to raise standards and promote consistency would be a welcome change. The league should make all of their officials full-time, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.
With the constant churn of calls and debates, not just officials but network rules analysts are finding themselves in the spotlight more than ever before. Pereira was the pioneer in that category and likes to think that it’s part of his legacy in the sport.
“And I am proud that I was the one that started the rules analyst thing. … I think the full broadcast of the game is better now, because of rules analysts. … The fact that I helped make the broadcast better for the fans and more understandable when it comes to rules — I’d like to be known for that.”
Mike Pereira is the OG rules analyst. And he remains great at what he does. But it now seems that almost every penalty or close call now needs a rules analyst to confirm or analyze what the officials were thinking. When Pereira started, he was brought in to dissect replay reviews and explain what was going on in more complex situations. Now we have rules analysts jump in on almost every call to explain that a quarterback getting hit in the head should be a roughing the passer penalty. And then at the most contentious moments, rules analysts often side with their former colleagues.
We’ve always been conditioned as fans to believe officials are at their best when they are not the story. In recent years, that’s become quite the opposite as refereeing is more visible than ever before. Anything that can be done to lessen that outsized impact would be welcome.
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