Just how bad are the NFL’s replacement referees? According to the Lingerie Football League, so bad that they were fired by the LFL for incompetence before being hired by the NFL as replacement refs.
The LFL emailed the following statement to many media outlets including LBS to let the truth be known about how unqualified the replacement refs were:
“Because of the LFL’s perception it is that much more critical for us to hire officiating crews that are competent, not only for the credibility of our game but to keep our athletes safer,” commissioner Mitchell Mortaza said in a statement. “Due to several on-field incompetent officiating we chose to part ways with with a couple crews which apparently are now officiating in the NFL. We have a lot of respect for our officials but we felt the officiating was not in line with our expectations.
“We have not made public comment to date because we felt it was not our place to do so. However in light of tonight’s event, we felt it was only fair that NFL fans knew the truth as to who are officiating these games.”
But that’s not all. The commissioner of the LFL, Mitch Mortaza, said he was shocked to learn that a referee who had been fired from the LFL for poor performance was hired by the NFL as an alternate official.
“It was a bit of a shock to see guys that couldn’t officiate in our league were officiating in the NFL,” Mortaza said.
Mortaza added that despite the fact that most people will not become enraged over a poor call in an LFL game, he still wants competent officials working the games.
“They were hurting our overall broadcast caliber,” he explained. “And if it’s opening up our players for potential injury, those things raise red flags here. Is it hurting overall credibility? When either of those two things are compromised, it’s time to start thinking about parting ways.”
Now that one football league has fired the replacements, will the important one follow? We can only hope that is the case.
