League considering full-time referees

INDIANAPOLIS — The NFL is considering making referees full-time employees and centralizing replay review at its New York headquarters as it aims for more consistent, shorter games.

Those were the major topics of discussion when the league’s competition committee met Tuesday in advance of the league’s annual scouting combine.

Falcons president Rich McKay, chairman of the competition committee, noted that the collective bargaining agreement allows the league to hire as many as 17 fulltime officials . “That is being discussed,” he told The Associated Press after the meeting.

The positives, McKay said, are better, centralized training and, ultimately, greater consistency between crews.

“When you have full-time people you have the ability to train more, to have them work together and therefore speak the same language, watch the same tape and try to create consistency crew to crew,” McKay said.

“One of the things that’s always been a struggle for us as a league is to be able to have coaches feel like they know going into that week how the game is going to be called because sometimes crews differ.”

Broncos boss John Elway, another member of the competition committee, said the caveat is that these referees have successful careers outside of football and they may not want to give up their day jobs.

“There’s no question there’s some people we feel like we would lose,” Elway said.