Sports

NFL, referees reach a labor deal after four-month lockout

GLAD TO SEE YA! After three disastrous weeks of replacement officials, fans will be happy to see Ed Hochuli and the NFL regulars back at work, starting at tonight’s Ravens-Browns game. (AP)

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The Great Zebra Crisis of 2012 finally is over.

Thanks to a momentum push from Monday’s farce of an ending in Seattle, the NFL and its referees struck a deal late Wednesday night to end a nearly 4-month-old labor dispute that had thrown the league into turmoil and tarnished its reputation.

The eight-year agreement — the longest between the NFL and its referees in the history of the league — still needs to be formally ratified in person by the union’s full membership tomorrow and Saturday in Dallas, but the sides expected to have a crew of regulars in place tonight for the matchup in Baltimore between the Ravens and Browns.

In other words, no more Lingerie Football League rejects — Ed Hochuli and his biceps are back.

“Our officials will be back on the field starting [Thursday] night,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We appreciate the commitment of the NFLRA in working through the issues to reach this important agreement.”

NFLRA chief Scott Green said the union’s board unanimously approved taking the deal to members for ratification.

“We are glad to be getting back on the field for this week’s games,” Green said.

The signed agreement, coming on the heels of marathon talks in Manhattan, came almost exactly 48 hours after the fill-in refs botched the ending of the Packers-Seahawks game in Seattle, mistakenly awarding a 14-12 win to Seattle with a missed call so egregious that even President Obama criticized it while calling for the return of the regular officials.

It wasn’t a total victory for the referees, but they appeared to fare much better at the bargaining table on the two main sticking points — the addition of more officials to the current lineup of 121 and the status of their pension plan — than they were expecting before the debacle in Seattle.

The league will add “a number of officials” still to be determined, including some on a full-time basis, but not the 19 the owners had been demanding right away, and the current referees will continue to receive a pension through 2016 before it transitions to a 401(k). The referees also will have their average pay bumped up to $173,000 from $149,000 starting next season.

“I’m relieved it’s over,” veteran referee Walt Coleman told the Houston Chronicle last night. “I think everybody’s relieved it’s over. It’s time to get back to work and move on.”

Though the league publicly supported the mistaken call in a much-ridiculed statement Tuesday, industry sources said behind the scenes there was concern bordering on panic among commissioner Roger Goodell, league officials and several prominent owners as the NFL’s reputation took one body blow after another.

Several owners were pressing Goodell to maintain a hard line in hopes of breaking the union, even as the hits to the league’s image piled up through three weeks of embarrassing mistakes by the fill-in refs.

The dispute boiled down to barely $3 million — a pittance relative to the NFL’s $9 billion in annual revenues — but the hardline owners pointed to TV ratings that remained sky high despite the referee dispute as proof the league could withstand the PR damage and still have its way with the union.

But once the disaster happened in Seattle, the doves among the ownership won out. Colts owner Jim Irsay broke ranks yesterday afternoon and appeared to show some embarrassment at the Seahawks-Packers disaster and the generally horrific performance of the fill-ins.

“Your loud voices r heard about getting Refs back,” Irsay wrote on Twitter. “We’re desperately trying 2 get it done! We want a deal that improves officiating overall.”

Added Irsay: “Let’s be clear,when our NFL Fans talk,we listen..if you’re unhappy,we’re unhappy…we’re here 2 serve U..everything we do is to please YOU!”