The NFL will have its regular officials back on the field tonight, as the owners ended their lockout of the referees, reaching a tentative agreement. The referees union must vote to approve the contract, but the NFL was holding up the return to play for the officials by locking them out, so their lifting that allowed the officials to go back to work.

Officials will receive a solid raise throughout the eight-year deal, and here is the information on their pensions, which was the main bone of contention…

Kudos to the New York Times for trying to peddle this poor helpless Roger Goodell spin. This is the NFL Commissioner who has lined up a $10 million ANNUAL pay increase at a time when the annual gap between the NFL and its referees is around $3.2 million. He could literally pay for the entire gap out of his pay raise and have nearly $7 million a year left over. I don’t dispute the idea that the tight-fisted owners have made the call to lock out the refs, but don’t tell me Goodell has no agency here.

The replacement ref incompetence has now officially cost one team a game, and the frustration on display in the third week of the lockout just grew even more.

As we wait for the outcome of the most high-profile labor dispute currently happening in America, the Chicago Teachers Union strike, I want to call attention to the other big labor action out there. National Football League referees have been locked out of the job since the beginning of the year. Four weeks of preseason and two weeks of the regular season have been officiated by scabs, replacement referees from college and even high school. The NFL had to remove one referee from a New Orleans Saints game after he was outed as a fan of the team; another scab was recruited from the Lingerie Football League.

Since the collective bargaining agreement with the NFL Referees Association expired on May 31, the regular NFL officials have been locked out. Taking the place of these officials with a combined tenure of roughly1500 years of NFL experience are people whose last refereeing jobs were in the lingerie football league.

Welcome to Labor Day, NFL style.