The NFL is a mess. The game’s integrity (what there is of it) could be restored in a heart beat.

All it would take to settle the lockout of the NFL refs would be for the Players Union to join them. Walk out.

One doesn’t have to love football or the NFL to see that the replacement referees have already jeopardized the integrity of the game. The Seahawks-Packer game last Monday is but the latest in a long series of incompetence by “replacement referees”.

The union movement in this country began with the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) calling on workers of the world to unite. When one trade union went on strike, other unions joined them…on strike…often at great sacrifice and with no immediate interest, because they understood that an assault on one worker or one union was an assault on all.

Monday night’s nationally televised game was refereed by replacement referees whom the union movement once would have called “scabs” – men willing to walk across a picket line to take the to take the jobs of striking or locked-out workers, collect their pay checks, and keep the production lines rolling at the factory while the bosses laughed on the way to the bank.

Unions, however, are not just about workers’ rigthts and collective bargaining. They have standards for competence and safety in their trades. They train their members. trained. Historically union members took pride in doing good work. Hiring a union plumber gave assurance to the homeowner that the plumber knew more than the do-it-yourself plumberf who flooded the second floor fixing a toilet.

If the unions serve their members, they also serve management by insuring that their employees are held to high standards of competence. The NFL referees union is no exception. They are trained. They are competent. Their replacements are not.

If the Players Union has a back bone…if the Players Union cares about the integrity of the game…if the Players Union cares about the other NFL employees who make profession football competent…the solution is simple.

Stand with the refs. Honor the best of the union movement and its history. Act not just for yourself. There’s no game without those men you love to hate on the football field: the professional, qualified refs who know what they’re doing.

Walk out!