ON DECK: Feeling bad for the replacement referees

Maybe it's because I don't have a team for them to blow calls against.

I don't feel anger towards the replacement refs. I don't want to send them out of stadiums tarred and feathered. They are underqualified for their position, but it's not their fault the regular referees and the NFL are in a stare down. They got asked to do a job that 99 percent of us would be underqualified for. They have made and missed calls 99 percent of us would have made and missed as well.

They are rewarded by people showering boos and, in Baltimore, the loudest you-know-what chant imaginable. They became the villains for merely stumbling into the scene of the crime.

I will switch my vitriol to Roger Goodell and the situation rather than the referees. I know refereeing may seem easy, but it's not. Movies make being a stockbroker look easy, but if I were thrown onto Wall Street, I'd ask: what's a hedge fund?