Unsportsmanlike Conduct

The National Football League is hugely popular and a very profitable sports business.  It has been estimated the value of the league is around 9 billion dollars.  Yet the greedy team owners locked out the league's regular referees over pay and pension disputes that were at best worth a few million dollars.  At that point NFL fans should have thrown an Unsportsmanlike Conduct flag on the   league and it's owners.  Team owners who think they always know best said replacement referees would be just as good but we all know how that turned out.  Blown calls and endless huddles over penalty decisions slowed the games and infuriated football fans.  Players started stretching the rules  and soon the poor poor replacement referees lost control of some games. There is such a vast difference between the National Football League and College or High School football that it's really hard to blame the replacement referees for the three weeks of chaos that defined the start of the 2012 NFL season.  I actually thought it would take a lot longer than three weeks before the league and it's owners would give in to the demands of the regular referees but three weeks is all it took.  The team owners gave the regular referees everything they had ask for relating to pay and pensions.  The league's hardball tactics had backfired on them so they figured it was best to get all the fan's anger into the review mirror before the NFL car ran into a ditch.
Fans, players, owners and even bookies  have to believe the games will be fundamentally fair.  In a game of controlled violence, cheap shots and extracurricular activity the replacement referees were not able to insure such  fairness.  I'll  continue  to watch NFL games, cheering for almost any team on any television screen and will  I not stop hollering at the television when I feel the referees make a bum call.  Regular referees or replacement referees it really makes no difference to me because it's only a game, not life or death.