Refs seize ratings lead over NFL

I am a football fan, but I would not normally stay up past my bedtime to watch Monday Night Football, even if my favorite teams were playing.

But last night I did stay up, because I wanted to see what might happen. Not with the teams. With the referees.

I don’t think the NFL understands the kind of trouble it’s in, when fans start watching the games to see what the referees will do. Monday night, my interest in what might happen was highly rewarded, totally worth staying up for, and it had nothing to do with Green Bay or Seattle. Based on their Monday night performance, I think the replacement refs should demand a raise. I know that today, sitcom producers are buzzing with excitement, and I am not kidding, about ideas for a “Replacement Refs” show.

Now it’s up to the NFL to wrest interest away from the referees and place it back with the game. Surely the NFL owners realize they are a media business, selling a product to television networks for a LOT of money, and the product they are selling is not football, but suspense. Pro football is a multi-billion-dollar business built entirely on the reality that the audience doesn’t know what is going to happen, and loves it. Such an audience keeps a vast universe of media entertainment humming, in television, books and movies.

But the suspense has to be legitimate, even pure, in the sense that genuine suspense won’t tolerate much contamination. Pro football fans invest serious levels of physical and emotional energy into their enjoyment, as I well know, and in return they expect a legitimate thrill of victory or agony of defeat. I recall an example provided by “Dallas,” the ‘70s television drama, which developed a certain line of suspense for an entire season, and then at the end said it had all been a dream. “Dallas” fans never got over it.

Now the NFL is three games into a season of referee drama in which a football game occasionally breaks out. NFL fans have an extremely high level of forgiveness, but this time the NFL may be asking too much. Which, of course, is for us, the audience, an attractive story, because the weekend is coming and we don’t know what is going to happen. Forget the teams, who don’t matter, and the replacement refs, which have now given us their best. This week’s big story: What will the fans do?