Officials Will Answer To Nobody!

Filed in archive NFL on December 27, 2007

green bay packers linebacker Nick Barnett got wrestled down by official Jim Quirk on Sunday (video below), and he's none too happy about it.

He's so upset that he is going to file a grievance with the NFL against Quirk, according to ESPN. Barnett's agent accurately states that had his client done something to that effect, there would be hell to pay:

"If Nick pushes [Quirk] to the ground just as a response, he'd be suspended and fined a couple of hundred grand."

As far as discipline, Quirk apparently got a stern talking to, and told to please not do that any more. Which is yet another example of an official being protected and not held accountable for their actions. This doesn't just happen in the NFL, it happens in all sports.

Officials are usually protected by their respective league, except in rare cases like when an umpire was suspended this summer for baiting notorious hothead Milton Bradley, of the San Diego Padres, into a confrontation that ended with Bradley tearing his knee up.

Cases like that are rare, however, as each professional league has a way of controlling the media. They allow only one pool reporter to ask the lead official a series of questions. That information is then doled out by the reporter to the other news hounds.

And so it goes that these men (and women, in the NBA) would feel untouchable, with little repercussions for their actions.