Dean Blandino, the NFL’s senior vice president for officiating, is leaving the league to pursue a career in television. The league notified teams Friday morning with a memo.
NFL needs a new officiating czar. Mike Carey is the only person for the job.
Dean Blandino, the VP for officiating, is stepping away from the game as the NFL implements a new centralized replay system. There’s only one man who can replace him.
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Blandino’s been in charge of officiating and interpreting the rulebook since 2013. He’s been synonymous with replay in the NFL. His first major task as part of the officiating department was to oversee the implementation of instant replay in 1999.
Under his watch, the NFL moved to a centralized replay system — approved just last month to begin with the 2017 season — the culmination of a project that started in 2015 when refs began consulting with Blandino’s team in New York to expedite the replay process and, ideally, iron out its kinks.
Blandino’s decision is not an unusual move. Given the complexities of the NFL rulebook, it’s nice when the broadcast networks have people who can actually understand it and translate it for the fans at home who just can’t understand why Dez Bryant didn’t catch the ball even though it sure looked a lot like he did.
That doesn’t change the fact that his departure, which becomes official at the end of May, leaves a big void at a critical juncture in how the league handles officiating and replay. Blandino would have been the one making the calls with the new centralized replay system.
The league will need to find a replacement for a job that will almost certainly make that person the most hated suit in the sport (except for maybe Roger Goodell himself). Several options have already been kicked around, including assistants under Blandino or veteran referees.
But there’s only one clear choice.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Mike Carey has more than two decades of experience as an NFL referee, but he’ll be forever immortalized as CBS’ rules expert who NEVER made the right call on the broadcast.
Why make him the new rules czar, the final arbiter of instant replay? Simple. Chaos theory. Nobody knows what the hell a catch is or what constitutes roughing the passer, so let’s just give the league a mainline injection of disorder.
There’s an equal chance your team will come out on the right side of a wrong call as it will on the short end. Even when the rules are correctly interpreted, we still complain about the outcomes we don’t like. Why not embrace it? I guarantee you we’ll be talking about the NFL all damn week, every week.
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