NFL, Refs Met On Sunday; No New Progress

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King reported that the NFL and the Referees Association met on Sunday afternoon. However, there wasn’t much progress in getting the referees a new deal. Whats more discouraging is that King doesn’t know the next time these groups will sit down for negotiations:

The league and the NFL Referees Association (the union for the 120 real officials) negotiated much of Sunday, until close to 9 p.m., in New York with a federal mediator present. But talks broke off with substantial differences remaining on several key issues, and the two sides didn’t schedule any further negotiations.

In his weekly article for SI.com, King brings up several examples of officiating gaffes from games such as Minnesota-San Francisco, Tennessee-Detroit, even Sunday night’s Baltimore-New England game. King goes on to say that it won’t be too long before these gaffes cost a team a victory:

It’s only a matter of time before some gaffe like a 27-yard penalty or two extra challenges costs some team a game it should have won. I think the league is going to have to compromise more than it wants to. The alternative is just too ugly. We’ve seen the alternative play out too often over the last eight days.

For more on the NFL referee lockout, stay with this story stream and check out SB Nation’s NFL hub.