Dean Blandino

Look, and you won't find anybody at the NFL in a leadership perspective that will say that officially.

They can't.

But the reality is officials that worked in 2012 that were replacement officials

were seen, like you said, as scabs.

And it affected their career.

It affected relationships.

And so if you, if it were me, and I'm in a position where I'm a very, very, very good college football official, and I have aspirations to go to the NFL, and I have a real chance,

I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to do it because of just all of those other things, the politics and everything else that goes into it, because that's real.

And it happened in 2012 with officials that were replacements and they were ostracized.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong.

It's just it happened.

Absolutely.

So they did pass as part of the most recent league meeting.

One of the proposals was in the in the instance that we have replacement officials, they'll expand the replay program and replay assist where from the command center they can get involved in in more things than they would normally do.

So I think the league is looking at that as kind of a backstop to help these officials that are going to be overwhelmed.

Going from the lower levels of college to the NFL, like we talked about.

So the command center would be more involved.

It would be interesting, again, because you don't want to unnecessarily slow down the game.

Does that become cumbersome where, you know, every time there's a flag thrown, are we waiting for someone in the command center to give a yay or nay response?