Just days ahead of the NFL’s annual meetings in Arizona, the NFL and NFL Referees Association do not appear any closer on a deal that would renew their collective bargaining agreement before its May expiration.
The lack of a deal shines light on a unique circumstance where the mighty NFL — the most profitable league in North American sports — does not have its usual leverage at the negotiating table. The referees union, made up of officials who have been determined to be the best of the best who also mostly don’t need the NFL’s part-time money, does not seem to be budging to the league’s wishes.
“We’re willing to sit at the negotiating table and work this through. We want to get to a deal with the officials. We’ve said that repeatedly,” NFL EVP Jeff Miller said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning. “We’ve worked on negotiations with them for going on two years at this point. We believe that there’s an opportunity here to improve our officiating and improve the performance and improve the accountability around it. And we will pay for performance. That’s not the issue. And we’ll continue to drive that point with our officials. And hopefully they’ll be willing to engage with us on those terms increasingly as we get closer to the expiration.
“We want the best officials on the field and we want greater accountability and greater performance and that’s what we’re going to continue to drive towards.”
The league began negotiating the next CBA back in the summer of 2024. But with negotiations at a standstill, the league has started to make contingency plans if it does not have its full suite of officials for the 2026 regular season.
If no deal is met by the start of the year, not only will the league use replacement officials again, 14 years after a disastrous first month with them during the last lockout, but next week NFL team owners will vote on a temporary rules proposal that will allow the league’s centralized officiating command center to weigh in on flags thrown and not thrown on plays.
The NFL has improved its technology by leaps and bounds in recent years. But it would also, for the first time ever, introduce the potential of flags being placed on the field by New York rather than the officials on the ground.
“I’m always the optimistic person in the room. I always feel there’s a deal that can get done,” Cowboys co-owner Stephen Jones told me at the NFL scouting combine last month. “Certainly hope that’s the case. Just like any business everybody has to prepare if there is a situation that we have to address whether that’s having to have replacement officials. Obviously you’re more prepared now with technology to help guys who maybe aren’t as seasoned, aren’t as good as the group we have right now.”
In 2012, sports gambling was still illegal in nearly every corner of America. Today it is available on any phone in a majority of NFL cities. The league’s revenue has more than doubled over that time. Never before has there been more money on the line when it comes to NFL games, and the league is less than six months away from having games officiated by the same referees who were calling Division-III games just a few months ago.
What the NFL wants very likely sounds good to the public. It wants to reward high-performing officials with better pay, and get the best officials on the field in the biggest postseason games. It wants to increase training and education for low-performing officials, and even get to them earlier in the offseason by shrinking the three-month dead period. And in what will ring out to everyone: the NFL wants to improve accountability for all officials.
“The officials are engaged in a part-time job. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to find time to work with the ones who need some assistance, education and training to improve,” Miller said Wednesday. “We deserve that. The fans deserve that. The players and coaches deserve that, and they’re held to account just like everybody else is. And officials should be in that same bucket. To the extent that they need opportunities for improvement, we believe that there should be an opportunity to help them improve in their performance.”
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Miller did not want to negotiate in public and, to be sure, outside of a few stray remarks, the officials union has done similarly. But it’s clear that the part-time officials are resisting being treated like full-time employees. Public accountability has largely evaded officials, and the league has done well in years past to offer cover any time controversy arises.
The NFL finds itself in a precarious position, as we wrote back in December. While technology has improved, it is nowhere close to being in a spot to replace human officials. The game is too big to be adjudicated by relative amateurs. The stakes are simply too high.
That no deal is imminent at the end of March could reasonably indicate one won’t be coming before the expiration of a deal in May, several months before games are played. Many believe that today’s players will never strike because the money is too great, giving management an eternal advantage in labor negotiations.
But as networks open up their wallets for broadcast rights, and as cities clamor to host the NFL draft, and as companies rush to pay for titles like the league’s first-ever “official condiment partner,” the part-time officials recognize they have something the league needs that only they can provide.
It’s a scarcity exercise that one day will make for a lesson in sports economics. And we have a few months to see how this one plays out.
