One of the worst referees ever is joining ESPN – report
It is an old saw that “those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.”
The corollary to this is that those who can play, coach or officiate professional sports do those things while those who can’t — because they’re retired in players’ case and fired or otherwise disgraced in coaches’ and referees’ case — get paid to talk about sports on TV and radio.
And no NFL referee exemplifies “otherwise disgraced” quite like Jeff Triplette, an official so putrid in his performance that a costumed circus clown could do a better job of calling a game.
So who better — besides “literally anyone else” — to take over the job of rules analyst on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” the guy whose job it is to explain to the rubes in the viewing audience why grabbing someone’s face mask and yanking it like you’re trying to unscrew the player’s head from his shoulders in the manner of a light bulb is “incidental contact” and therefore only a 5-yard penalty?
Triplette “retired” (wink, wink) from the NFL after the 2017 season, and it seems like the favor he did the league in terms of yet another PR problem is being generously repaid, according to Cameron Filipe of the Football Zebras blog.
Said Filipe, “Nearly six months off his retirement, Jeff Triplette is slated to join ESPN as a rules analyst along with newcomers Joe Tessitore and Jason Witten in the Monday Night Football booth, according to officiating and network sources. Football Zebras has also learned that the NFL specifically steered ESPN to hire Triplette. He will be replacing former referee Gerald Austin, who has served on the MNF team since 2012.”
So for those of you scoring at home, the ESPN “Monday Night Football” booth is now a boxing announcer who primarily called college games when broadcasting football, a recently retired tight end with no experience doing color commentary, and the most hated referee in the league.
Twitter was … displeased.
https://twitter.com/DennyDSmith/status/1009800161122488321
Um, shouldn't he know the rules? Asking for a million football friends.
— Joe Manniello (@joe_manniello) June 21, 2018
Absolute worst Referee in past 20 years. #NFL
— Tim Mahan (@MahanTim) June 21, 2018
You have got to be kidding me… I’d rather here the rules explained by my wife. It wouldn’t be much of a difference.
— Booze Deville (@JdotCdotDykes) June 20, 2018
After all, Triplette’s officiating was so bad that in 2013, he couldn’t even get a touchdown call right with slow-motion replay. And that incident was the second major screw-up in two weeks for Triplette and his crew.
Coming as it did just a year after replacement referees bunged up the infamous “Fail Mary” in the Seahawks-Packers game, one could fairly wonder if all the hubbub over replacement refs was overblown; at least they were better than Jeff Triplette.
Football zebras, like their savanna-dwelling namesake, tend to be a herd who protect their own, but in Triplette’s case, his fellows would just as soon let the lions (or maybe the Bengals or the Bears) eat him.
As a high school official, I have always been the guy sticking up for other refs. But this guy is really hard to defend.
— Scott Reilly (@SReilly1212) June 21, 2018
And Mike Pereira, the former VP of officiating for the league, slammed Triplette during last year’s playoffs when the crew bunged up the Titans-Chiefs playoff game.
Horrible way to start the playoffs. I hate to say it but this was not a good performance by the crew. Teams and fans deserve better.
— Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) January 7, 2018
Fans remember that one too.
After the call in the #Chiefs #Titans playoff game he should be banned from any nfl facility. He is awful!
— Jeff Hill (@coachHill80) June 21, 2018
ESPN has enough going wrong with its deal with the NFL. The network regularly gets a terrible matchup between teams going nowhere, having ceded the prime real estate in terms of game of the week to NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”
Ratings have cratered lately, and it seems unlikely that the “Worldwide Leader,” under constant revenue pressure from its shrinking cable TV subscriber base, will pay anything near the amount it has spent on rights fees negotiated during richer times.
But giving viewers one more reason to change the channel? Well, the league asked for it. When “Monday Night Football” dies out for lack of ratings, don’t say you never saw it coming.
Because not seeing things that are obvious is Jeff Triplette’s job.
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