Top 10 reasons why the NFL isn't negotiating with the refs

Will Ref Games, Badly, For Food

10) Believe in the moral stand that no worker in America should have a pension and/or retirement

9) When you spot the ball on the wrong line of scrimmage, you give television design professionals work to show you happy color bars about the errors

8) Longer games with more waiting for the scabs to figure out what to do means more commercials and venue concession sales

7) Sports radio is secretly paying Roger Goodell for the easy programming grist

6) It's the only way to bring back some of the physicality -- OK, all of the physicality -- that was taken out of the game by last year's rule changes

5) Convinced that if the scab refs just keep the jobs, they'll be as good as the real guys by 2025

4) It's part of the league's attempt to add to the in-stadium experience by making sure that everyone stays in the stadium a lot longer

3) The league feels really badly about the low salaries paid at the nation's Wal-Marts and 7-11's. and wants to keep supplementing the income of those workers

2) Once more with feeling: the world's most prosperous sports league, with billions in advertising and broadcast revenue, will not pay a pittance to make their game better or safer, because they just don't give a crap

1) They aren't exactly seeing any lower ratings from this