The replacement refs are opening up about their experience in the NFL. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

NFL replacement refs Wayne Elliot and Jim Core opened up to Inside the NFL about life over the past few months, offering anecdotes about their conversations on the field with players to more serious talks about being trained not to call interceptions or pass interferences in hail mary situations.

Elliot, a real estate agent from Texas who has officiated high school, college and indoor football leagues, was the head referee for the now-controversial Seattle Seahawks-Green Bay Packers game. He made the announcement that the play stands after the Seahawks’ Golden Tate caught the game-winning touchdown on a 24-yard pass from Russell Wilson, giving the team a last second win over the Packers in Week 3.

He and Core explained that they were taught by the officials who trained the replacement refs that there’s a philosophy for every rule in the NFL. The philosophy regarding hail mary situations, they were told, is to not call an interception or pass interference. Instead, they were told to just let the play unfold because there’s too many hands in the situation.

Elliot said that his cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing for the 72 hours following his controversial ruling on the field, getting calls from hundreds of people reacting to the game-changing decision. Some of those callers, he said, told him to commit suicide. He said that “1 out of 100″ thanked him for letting the play stand as a touchdown. After the game, Elliot described the refs’ locker room as a “losing locker room.” He admitted that after looking at the play several times, he would’ve ruled it an interception by the Packers, which would’ve ended the game as a loss for the Seahawks.

Core, a geography teacher at a middle school in Iowa, said he had received an e-mail in the spring, with about a week left of school, asking him if he wanted to apply to become an NFL replacement ref. He went ahead with the application because he said he had “tried to get up the ladder for a number of years and for whatever reason it wasn’t happening.”

Core, who last officiated the San Diego Chargers-Atlanta Falcons game, said that one of the Chargers approached him as the final seconds ticked off the game clock. The player, who Core did not identify, reportedly told him that in rating his performance as a replacement ref on a scale of 1 to 10, he was a “negative 10.” The Falcons won the game 27-3.

Core also said that during a Bears game that he worked, Bears quarterback Jay Cutler reportedly called him an expletive to his face because he didn’t reset the game clock. Core said Cutler later came up to him during a time out and told him that he called him that name because it was the only way he could get his attention, and then he offered Core some of his water. Core also said that the hardest coach to deal with during his short-lived time in the NFL was Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano. He said Schiano, who is in his first stint as an NFL head coach after more than two decades with college teams , is on “a different level” than other NFL coaches.

Footage of the interview with Elliot and Core can be seen here.

The replacement refs have been replaced but the NFL is still paying them, according to a report confirmed by NFL.com. 

According to the report, 112 replacement refs will receive either $3,500 or $3,000, depending on whether they were a referee or a sideline official.

The refs worked the first three weeks of the NFL season but the league and the referees association came to terms on a new contract days before Week 4 was set to begin.

The news was first reported by our own Peter King.

The $344,000 golden parachute: NFL decides to pay its 112 replacement officials for not working this weekend.—
Peter King (@SI_PeterKing) September 29, 2012

Roger Goodell apologized for fans stressed over replacement officials. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized to fans who felt anxious and stressed by the work of replacement officials during a conference call today.

“Obviously when you go through something like this it is painful for everybody,” he said on a conference call Thursday, about 12 hours after the league reached a deal to bring back the regular officials. “Most importantly, it is painful for our fans.

“We are sorry to have to put our fans through that, but it is something that in the short term you sometimes have to do to make sure you get the right kind of deal for the long term and make sure you continue to grow the game.”

Goodell said the timing of today’s tentative eight-year agreement to end the lockout of the officials’ union was not tied to public outcry surrounding a missed interference call and controversial catch that resulted in a last-play Seattle win over Green Bay. He said the two sides had been involved in “intensive negotiations” over the last two weeks. He did, however, admit that game “may have pushed the parties further along.”

Golden Tate admitted he got away with a penalty on the final play of the Seahawks-Packers game. (Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Golden Tate has admitted to pushing off Green Bay Packers defensive back Sam Shields in the final seconds of the Seahawks’ controversial Week 3 win and fully acknowledged getting away without penalty, but he said he never had the intention to cheat, according to ESPN.com:

“As far as pushing the defender, I was caught up in the moment, playing football. At that point, it was just like backyard football — find a way to get the ball. I didn’t intentionally try to shove him to the ground. [T]he evidence shows on the film. But I never had intentions on cheating. I wasn’t trying to cheat. I was competing, it was in the moment.”

His statement comes as a contradiction to comments he made in an earlier report that he told ESPN sideline reporter Lisa Salters that he didn’t know what she was talking about when she asked him if he had in fact pushed off Shields.

The 24-yard touchdown reception ended up giving the Seahawks a 14-12 win over the Packers on the final night of the replacement referees officiating an NFL game. The league and the referees association came to terms on a new contract to have them back on the field officiating starting with Thursday’s games.

A Green Bay eye doctor is offering free Lasik surgery to the NFL replacement refs. (Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

A lot has been said about the NFL’s replacement refs this season. A few coaches in the league have been fined for their supposed verbal abuse towards them. Even President Barack Obama weighed in on their performance.

Now, a Green Bay eye doctor is offering free Lasik eye surgery to the replacement refs, only days after the Green Bay Packers lost in controversial fashion to the Seattle Seahawks.

According to WTVR in Appleton, WI, Dr. Christopher Smith, a local optometrist, has promised free Lasik eye surgery to any NFL replacement ref in order to prevent another confusing ending like the one that transpired on Sept. 24 when Seahawks receiver Golden Tate caught the game-winning touchdown with eight seconds remaining in the game. Smith said the one ref in particular who called the play a touchdown is nearsighted and needs to see beyond his own arm:

“The referees obviously they had some vision issues, so we decided that we could  help them with that,” said Dr. Christopher Smith.

The NFL and the NFL Referees Association are reportedly close to ending the lockout and the regular refs could be back on the field as early as Sept. 30.

The locked out referees are reportedly close to getting back on the field. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

The NFL and NFL Referees Association are close to ending the officials lockout and both sides will work to have officials on the field this weekend, ESPN.com reports.

An agreement in principle is at hand, according to one source familiar to talks, although NFL owners have postured with a “no more compromise” stance.

Sources say it could take a week or more to get the 121 officials back on the field, and that the locked out referees are training on the new rules that were installed this season. The call got stronger for the regular officials to get back to work after Monday’s night game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks ended in controversy.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has wanted the power to “bench” officials who underperform or are downgraded during the season. The NFLRA contends the league already has that ability because there are always between one and four crews that sit home each week and would be more qualified to substitute in such a scenario.

The NFL and NFLRA have reached an agreement on the use of backup officials. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

The NFL and NFL Referees Association have reached an agreement on the issue of backup crews, reports NFL.com.

The league compromised in putting 21 full-time officials in developmental program. The 21 officials (three crews of seven officials each) will not be part of a regular group of NFL officials. The regular officials are still locked out as retirement pension remains an issue.

The NFL and NFLRA negotiated past midnight on Tuesday, but are still far apart on various issues.

“When you take a group of officials who have a collective experience of 1,500 years off the field and you replace them with a group of replacements who don’t have that experience, our players know that the workplace today is less safe than it was with the real officials,” NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith said on “CBS This Morning”.

The officials had a defined-benefit pension plan and the NFL wants to eliminate that plan and switch the NFLRA over to a 401(k).

Roger Goodell became involved with negotiations between the NFL and referees’ association last week. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Roger Goodell became “personally involved” with negotiations between the NFL and NFL Referees Association three times last week, including Sunday’s talks, ESPN.com’s Chris Mortensen reported.

From Mortensen’s report:

Goodell joined the league’s lead negotiators, Bob Batterman and Jeff Pash, who met with the NFLRA’s lead negotiators, Scott Green and Mike Arnold, for several hours Sunday without reaching an agreement on a new CBA for locked-out officials.

While no new face-to-face negotiations were scheduled because of “significant differences,” both sides were expected to maintain communication, still hopeful of narrowing the gap, sources said.

SI.com’s Peter King reported Sunday that the league and NFLRA had met on Sunday until nearly 9 p.m. with a federal mediator. But the talks fell apart without any hint of a new deal, and the two sides did not schedule any future talks.

The NFL locked out its officials in June, and replacement referees’ follies have become a major storyline through the first three weeks of the season.

After the Patriots lost to the Ravens Sunday night, New England head coach Bill Belichick grabbed a referee after saying he was looking for an “explanation” for some calls during the game. (He faces a possible fine for the contact.) And SI.com’s Chris Burke detailed some of the other Week 3 controversies, including one referee awarding the San Francisco 49ers a fourth timeout.

Ex-NFL referee Jerry Markbreit said that the league doesn’t care about player safety. (Robert Sullivan/Getty Images)

Ex-NFL referee Jerry Markbreit said that the league is putting the health and safety of players at risk because of replacement officials, reports USA Today.

“Commissioner Roger Goodell and (league counsel) Jeff Pash, who met with some of our negotiating guys for two days this week, accomplished nothing,” Markbreit said.”It’s incredible they could jeopardize the safety and integrity of the league. My only conclusion is that they just don’t care.”

Markbreit is the only official to work four Super Bowls and used last night’s game between the New York Giants and the Carolina Panthers as an example of why he believes that the league could care less about safety.

“In last night’s Giants-Panthers game, there were two players fighting on the ground and the official is standing there like an NHL referee instructed to let them fight for a couple of minutes,” Markbreit said.

Markbreit was an official for the NFL for 23 years and retired in 1998. Markbreit was a trainer for veteran and new NFL Referees Association officials until June 6.  On June 3, talks between the league and NFLRA broke off.

The NFL is reviewing the case of referee Brian Stropolo, who the league pulled from officiating the Saints game Sunday after learning he was a Saints fan. (Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

Brian Stropolo, the referee who the NFL pulled from working the Saints-Panthers game on Sunday after it emerged that he was a Saints fan, is being reviewed by the NFL and will not be allowed to return to work until the review is done.

ESPN reported Monday night that the league was reviewing Stropolo after it discovered Sunday that he expressed his status as a Saints fan on his Facebook page. The NFL had made the decision just hours before the Saints game on Sunday.

“We are reviewing Mr. Stropolo’s status and pending completion of that review, he will not be serving as an on-field game official,” Greg Aiello, the league’s senior vice president of communications, told ESPN Monday.

Stropolo is one of the replacement officials that have faced mounting criticism in the first two weeks of the NFL season. He was an official during the season-opening game between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants in Week 1.

The NFL has reportedly scheduled replacement officials to work for the first five weeks of the NFL season. (Larry French/Getty Images)

Despite a rather woeful first official week from the NFL’s replacement referees, ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter reported Monday that the referee lockout isn’t on track to end anytime soon.

With no resolution to talks between the NFL and its locked-out referees in sight, the league has devised a schedule for replacement referees through the first five weeks of the season.

The news comes on the heels of increased scrutiny that has been placed on the replacement officials in Week 1. FOX Sports’ Jay Glazer reported Sunday that the NFL Players Association sent a letter to the NFL requesting the return of the officials.

Meanwhile, Buffalo Bills defensive end Mario Williams slammed the replacement refs, saying he was the victim of non-calls all game in the Bills’ loss to the Jets on Sunday.

“It’s not something that’s really going to dictate something, but what are you going to do about it? You’re getting off the ball and getting punched in the face, literally, not an accident, just about every other time,” Williams said, according to The Buffalo News. That’s a penalty. Unless they changed it with the new CBA or something, but last time I checked it was a penalty.”

The officials also mistakenly awarded Seattle an extra timeout late in the fourth quarter, which didn’t end up affecting the outcome of the Seahawks’ loss to the Arizona Cardinals.

The league locked out the officials in early June. The two sides are in dispute over salary, retirement benefits and operational issues.

The NFLRA and the NFL are reportedly $70 million apart in negotiations. (Larry French/Getty Images)

The National Football League is still far from reaching a deal with its locked out referees, and according to Mike Florio of NBC Sports’ ProFootballTalk.com, the two sides are reportedly $70 million apart in negotiating a new contract.

Citing an e-mail from NFLRA spokesman Michael Arnold to PFT, Florio reported that the officials’ current proposal asks for $30 million in salary and benefits for the 2012 season.

Florio also confirmed citing a league source that the refs refused to budge from their pre-lockout position when the two sides met on Sept. 1:

A league source tells PFT that, when the parties met on Saturday, the NFLRA reverted to their pre-lockout position, which creates a gap of up to $70 million over the seven-year life of the deal.

The replacement refs, meanwhile, will get the chance to prove naysayers wrong when the NFL kicks off its regular season on Sept. 5 with a night game between the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys.

The NFL season will reportedly start off using replacement officials. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

The NFL will start the season with replacement officials after the league was not able to reach a deal with the NFL Referees Association, reports CBSSports.com.

The reports says that the league sent a memo to each of the 32 NFL teams letting them know that those replacement officials that have worked the preseason will be in place when the league kickoffs the season next Wednesday when the Dallas Cowboys play the Super Bowl champion New York Giants.

“We believe that if the National Football League fails in that obligation we reserve the right to seek any relief that we believe is appropriate,”  NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith told SI.com. ”The NFL has chosen to prevent the very officials that they have trained, championed and cultivated for decades to be on the field to protect players and — by their own admission — further our goal of enhanced safety. That is absurd on its face.”

The NFL has been talking with the referee association for the past couple of weeks and there hasn’t been much progress to get a new deal done.

Replacement referee Jerry Hughes could be working into the regular season, as there appears to be no end in sight to a potential NFL official lockout. (Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)

NFL executives expect the referee lockout to last into the regular season, ESPN.com’s Chris Mortensen and Adam Schefter reported Monday. The league officials told ESPN that the NFL is likely to continue using replacement referees, who have caused headaches already in the preseason.

ESPN reported that neither side is making a deal any closer. There are two reasons why:

For starters, the NFL wants to make a group of officials, who work only part time for the NFL, work full time. But more than 90 percent of those officials already have full-time jobs and they are unwilling to leave them and the revenue they provide.

The other issue is that the NFL wants to add three additional crews to give officials more rest and the league more officiating options, but the locked-out officials oppose this. In an ideal world, the NFL would like a bigger pool of officials to choose from, especially with some of the top officials aging. The league believes if it could bring in more officials now, it could groom more for the future.

The first point goes along with well-known refs like Ed Hochuli, who is a full-time lawyer at a firm that partly bears his name. Similarly, Mike Carey founded and owns a snow-sports products company.

ESPN reported that the replacement officials have assignments through Week 3 of the preseason, a sign that the league is prepared to go into the season with the referee lockout.

From the point the Saints and Cardinals openly mocked the refs after the Hall of Fame Game last week, the replacement officials haven’t gone over smoothly. In early August on The Dan Patrick Show, former NFL vice president of officiating and current Fox Sports analyst Mike Pereira said a referee lockout “strongly compromises the integrity of the game.”

“You can not really know that the game is going to be officiated properly,” Pereira said.

Raiders defensive tackle Richard Seymour thinks the game’s integrity is at stake if the NFL continues to use replacement officials. (Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

NFL players better get used to seeing replacement officials on the field if the impasse between the league and the regular officials doesn’t get solved.

Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Richard Seymour thinks the game is in serious jeopardy if the replacements continue to officiate games.

“I think the integrity of the game is at stake,” Seymour told USA Today. “You never know who they know and who they’re connected to. And who are their favorite teams. ”To just say we’ve got some new guys coming in, who knows? They might admire Peyton Manning.”

The NFL says everything will be fine and that the players have nothing to worry about. Seymour disagrees.

 ”It’s just the unknown,” he said. “I’m not a fan of the replacements. Our regular refs, they work so hard to prepare themselves all throughout the year. They put in a ton of work to compete at the highest level. I want the best of the best.”

The league isn’t being honest about the credentials of its replacement refs, said Mike Pereira. (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

Mike Pereira, who spent eight years as the NFL’s vice president of officiating over the last decade, said on Tuesday that the league “wants as little out as possible” about the lack of credentials held by the replacement refs who are scheduled to officiate this season if the league and its referees association don’t come to terms on a new contract, according to CBS.com.

Pereira specifically singled out replacement ref Craig Ochoa, saying he is just another example of someone who isn’t qualified to officiate a professional league game.

“He didn’t work in the Big Ten. He’s not been a major college official. I don’t think the NFL is going to say that he actually got released midway through the last lingerie football league season as a referee. I don’t think the league is going to put that out. The league wants as little out as possible. They don’t want people talking about it.”

Pereira said that the speed of the game and the complexity of its enforcement rules will be two big changes for the replacement refs if commissioner Roger Goodell moves forward with the league’s plan to use them next season. Periera thinks that the game’s integrity will be compromised if the best football talent doesn’t have the best officiating:

“There’s no question to me that the integrity of the game will be compromised.”

The NFL is set to use replacement officials starting with this Sunday’s Hall of Fame Game. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

Since there appears to be no settlement between the NFL referees and the league in the near future, fans can expect to see replacement refs very soon.

In fact, the replacements will be working this Sunday’s Hall of Fame Game between the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints in Canton, Ohio to open the preseason.

“Yes we are,”  NFL VP of Football Operations Ray Anderson said to the NFL Network when asked about using replacement refs. “Our replacement crews are deployed to training camps now and our crew will be prepared for the Hall of Fame Game Sunday and we will kick off and start our NFL season.”

The NFL has offered 5-to-11-percent raises to the current officials, according to Anderson.

“It always comes down to money,” he said. “So there’s dollars and a pension plan structure that they want to continue and we want to substitute for. Those are the two main issues, frankly: dollars and pension. And we’re at disagreement and we’ll get back to the table shortly.”

The NFL refs are at an impasse with the league, filing an unfair labor practice suit today. (Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

The NFL Referees filed a unfair labor practice suit against the NFL claiming the league “has engaged in ‘direct dealing’ by sending letters to locked-out game officials that ‘contained inaccurate, false and incomplete information regarding bargaining issues and proposals.’”

According to Profootballtalk.com, the NFLRA says that the NFL sent its referees letters on two separate occasions so the association took their grievances to the National Labor Relations Board.

“It is clear the league never intended to work toward a fair agreement, even through mediation,” NFLRA executive director Mike Arnold said in a press release.  “As previously noted, the NFL sent out notices regarding the recruitment of replacement referees while we were actively negotiating under the auspicious of a jointly agreed upon Federal Mediator.”

The league has been looking at the possibility of using replacement referees if a deal is not reached before the start of the season.

“There is no merit to these claims,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello told Pro Football Talk in an email. “It is common for employers during collective bargaining to provide factual information to employees that has already been communicated to the union.  That is all that was done here.”