NFL officials gather for contract ratification vote, then full return to work

IRVING, Texas – NFL officials on the verge of approving a new contract say they are excited to get back to work.

Officials arrived Friday at a Dallas-area hotel to discuss and vote on an eight-year agreement reached with the league late Wednesday. They were meeting Friday night with a vote on the contact expected Saturday morning. Some planned to fly directly after the vote to their assigned cities for Sunday’s game.

The deal must be ratified by 51 per cent of the union’s 121 members.

The officials were expected to meet the media at 7 p.m. but the news conference was cancelled.

Some said they thought Monday night’s Packers-Seahawks game, which ended in chaos after a call in the end zone gave the Seahawks the winning touchdown instead of a Packers interception, provided the final push toward a settlement. Many fans commentators — and players in the league — thought the call was botched.

Monday night’s call brought the three-week furor over replacement officials to a fevered pitch.

“It’s all history now,” head linesman Tom Stabile said. “For us, it was a benefit. It may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Line judge Jeff Bergman said he could see the play coming as he watched at home. He noticed that players were starting to take advantage of replacement officials struggling to keep control of the game.

“The last play of the game was something that was going to happen sooner or later,” Bergman said. “It gave us and the league an opportunity to get together and hammer out a deal that was going to get hammered out anyway.”

Referee Ed Hochuli, who led weekly tests and conference calls for officials to stay sharp during the lockout, declined to say whether the replacements made the right call.

“You really don’t want to see that,” Hochuli said. “You don’t want to see the controversy. You don’t want to see teams lose games that they shouldn’t have lost, if indeed that’s what happened. We’re not making a judgment on that.”

After three weeks of games marred by mistakes, the regular refs said they were heartened by the support they’ve received from fans, players and coaches — even if they don’t expect it to last very long now that they’re back.

“You’re not really beloved by the public. You’re tolerated. And to see that type of reception that our guys got last night was really heartwarming,” said Bergman, who will head to Green Bay for Sunday’s game, one week after Packers players ripped the replacements for calling Monday’s disputed play a touchdown.

“After the euphoria of the moment wears off, probably sometime early in the second quarter, it’ll be back to regular NFL football mode,” Bergman said. “Players will be questioning our judgment, our ancestry. Coaches will be screaming at us. And it’ll be life as back to normal on Sundays.”

One crew returned to work Thursday night. Cheered from the moment they walked onto the field, the men in stripes ran a smooth and efficient game as the NFL’s lockout of officials came to an end with the Baltimore Ravens’ 23-16 win over the Browns.

“To just be applauded by 50,000 people prior to anything happening, it was something that kind of chokes you up,” referee Gene Steratore said. “It was a very special feeling.”

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AP Sports Writers Joseph White and Rachel Cohen and AP Pro Football Writer Barry Wilner contributed to this story.

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