Has the NFL lost the integrity of the game?

well the NBA survived a ref coming out and describing all the fricked up shite they'd do ON TOP OF being involved in a scenario involving changing games for bets, so i think the NFL will be ok

no.

The games and players are still enjoyable. I'll be watching next weekend.

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Has the NFL lost the integrity of the game?

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Of course it has. anyone who thinks differently is really really dumb.

No dude that is the saints job.

hell yes.. don't forget about the BS roughin the passer on the same drive and then the pass interference that never happened

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The outcomes are not predetermined and the rules are fairly enforced. This is not boxing or wrestling and it is why the League cracks down so hard on gambling influences on its operations.

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Be sure to leave the milk and cookies for Santa.

Stern minimized the Donaghy situation from the first second the Feds busted him. The "lone, rogue official" BS

this is different, this is every game, league wide calling the credibility of the league into question

Goodall serves at the pleasure of the owners
If his office damages the league it is up to the owners to remove him

My point is the product on the field affects the value of the individual teams. If the integrity of the game is in question then the value of the teams is diminished. This is not reflected in the near term but it is really big picture stuff.

The real Reffs are not negotiating for right now, they are negotiating a long term contract. Which is "big picture" thinking. Tonight's game is a small factor but a glaring example of how important accurate rule enforcement is to the integrity of the league itself.

Integrity of the league = directly proportional to the value of the individual teams

LINK

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At this point, it's become time for the league to put its tail between its legs, apologize profusely, and ask the locked-out referees to come back under a deal of the NFLRA's choosing. There's no reason the referees should accept the same terms they would have offered two weeks ago; after a weekend dominated by the replacements, the real referees have more leverage than they had even a week ago. In fact, the only reason the league might want to push an agreement back further is that they have no leverage whatsoever.

It's hard to imagine the replacements being quite as noticeably bad as they were this week. If you make that move now, you also put a line under it and reduce this lockout to an early-season curiosity as opposed to a season-defining fiasco. The league can point to the positive effort it made to end the lockout as opposed to letting it linger on until the union breaks. If this gets to Week 8 and remains as big a story as it has been, though, the whole scenario is different.

2012 becomes a lost season, one in which the public doesn't necessarily believe that the best teams in the league are competing in the playoffs. That kills your league's credibility. The NFL is actually lucky that this disappointment happened to the Packers, who have no central owner who would complain to the league on their behalf. What if this happened to the Cowboys and they ended up missing the playoffs by one game? Don't you think Jerry Jones would be rattling every cage he could find to threaten the league with a lawsuit?

I recently read an argument suggesting that the replacement refs don't really matter in the big picture. The evidence is that NFL ratings are still sky-high, which suggests that the fans who complain that poor refereeing is "ruining" the game are still watching. And it's true, maybe they are still watching. But as the season goes along, if the games continue to produce terrifyingly false endings like Packers-Seahawks, I'm pretty sure that's going to change. The easiest way to get people to stop watching is to make them think that the games they're watching are illegitimate and irrelevant. With the continued employment of replacement referees, that is the exact path the NFL's games are on.

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