ld shouldn't be expected to live with such horrible, amateurish calls . So officials will have to live with it, like they do in other sports. With the history of a first failed attempt in the way and the fact that coaches will not give up a timeout to challenge a call, the league is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Without giving up a timeout the game will run too long, as it did before, and they know they can't give free reign to challenge every call. What the league must do is simple. First, keep instant replay out of the game and end this debate. Let the human element decide the outcome. The tight end who drops the ball in the end zone doesn't get a second chance. Why should the official? We've seen what happened when officials had big brother watching. They became tentative. They also were involved in a good number of calls which couldn't be conclusively determined from a replay. The game was delayed by the review. Second, the league must make officials full-time employees. The money it spends on the gaudy commissioner's party at the Super Bowl could probably pay for all the salaries. Right now, officials, according to the NFL, receive roughly from $1,600 to $4,000 a game, depended on length of service. Pay them a realistic annual wage so that no coach can complain that a high school assistant principal kept him out of the playoffs. It won't be cheap, not when benefits are included. But we are long past the days when players needed to work in the offseason. The arbiters of the game should past that point as well. The other major professional leagues-baseball and basketball-have full-time officials. "Pro" football should be no different. There is a full six months for officials to work in football, starting with training camps in July and going to the end of December-and that's not counting those chosen for the playoffs. In the spring, they could attend minicamps held by teams. In the ...
