Thursday, August 30, 2001
Phil Luckett, meet Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan
By Ray Ratto Special to ESPN.com
You won't believe this, especially once you've seen a few games that
turn into dockfights without the empty gin bottles, but the NFL has hit on a
brilliant marketing concept with its lockout of its officiating staff.
Not because the officials are asking for too much money, mind you.
They're not. The old adage about getting what you pay for is rarely truer
than it is in this instance. The game already is borderline ungovernable, and
to bring in a whole new group of people who know far less about its arcane
rules than those already on staff ... well, put it this way: Don't be
surprised if someone gets called for a high-sticking penalty on Opening
Day.
The NFL wants officials with personality? Put Jesse Ventura in stripes and give him a whistle.
The new officials are, after all, going to come from previously
undertapped sources ... colleges, NFL Europe, perhaps even the XFL.
And therein lies the marketing opportunity. It's only a short step from
the XFL to the World Wrestling Federation, since Vince McMahon owned both
entities, and nobody knows how to market officials quite like ol' Vince.
Of course, this is what we all said when he thought he could create a
football league out of whole sequined cloth, and that idea lasted only
slightly longer than the Joseph Stalin Halloween costume craze. So maybe we
shouldn't take McMahon as the undefeated master of the art.
But if you'll remember (and even if you won't), the NFL was training its
officials to show at least a little more personality on the field -- that
is, before the officials were repainted as soul-draining, life-denying
ambassadors of untrammeled greed.
So they want personality, and they want new officials. Sounds like a job
for the pro wrestling crowd.
The latest wrestling craze has hit a wall. Crowds are down, story lines
are weaker, and since McMahon bought out Ted Turner's wrestling company, he
owns all the wrestlers on earth. Thus, whatever fun could be gleaned from the
scam is about dried out, to the point where (and get this) McMahon had a
match at one of his recent pay-per-view shows between feuding referees.
Stupid? Maybe. I mean, who ever heard of Earl Hebner and Nick Patrick,
let alone wanted to pay to watch them actually wrestle?
On the other hand, what shows more personality, at least among
middle-aged white guys who go to work wearing slacks and a bow tie, than a
brawl?
Of course, McMahon's officials are full-time, able to devote their
entire day to reading and re-reading the WWF Official's Rules and Casebook (a
3x5 index card upon which are listed the twenty-six instances in which a
referee should ignore rule-breaking). NFL officials are part-timers, a point
that usually seems to matter more when a field judge blows a pass
interference call, or a line judge confuses the goal line with the hot dog
line.
And therein lies the other benefit to the NFL -- hitting the McMahon hiring
hall, especially the wrestling line. These are men who are used to missing
calls and can bounce back from the odd judgmental error. After all, these
are men who have failed to notice wrestlers who have thrown powder in other
wrestlers' eyes, hauled tables into the ring, hit each other with chairs,
hammers, crutches, garbage cans and in a few examples we know, women.
It takes a lot to miss the use of an entire hardware store, and to not
only keep your job but to keep it for decades.
Not only that, the other replacement officials will have plenty of
trouble deciphering the NFL's elephantine rulebook, so it stands to reason
that the WWF officials, unworried by such details, can hit the field with
clear minds and pure hearts, using common sense to separate a fumble from a
muff, to know the difference between encroachment and offside, and to know
the difference between spearing and spearing with a lead pipe.
Dismiss it if you must, but the longer the officials lockout lasts, the
more you'll see the wisdom in this idea. It is surely no more idiotic than
the one the NFL is using now, imperiling its game to save a few bucks in one
of the few areas where thrift is automatically punished.
Besides, who wouldn't enjoy the vision of Warren Sapp jumping off a
ladder onto the prone form of Kerry Collins? People seem to like that sort of
thing when it's on Thursday night cable, and the NFL is never in position to
turn down a potential audience.
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
