“They apologized,” Olson told the St. Pete Times. “We’ve had a number of those this year. It’s real discouraging. We’ve played some tight games, but you can’t have those kinds of mistakes. It’s disappointing, obviously. Now, it wasn’t the only play in the game, but it was a critical one at a critical time.”

He also went on to say that the letters are something that coaches are not supposed to publicly discuss.

Now, believe it or not, I’m not writing this for the sole purpose of bitching about officiating. Every fan of every losing team can usually find something that the refs did that they didn’t like. I still get angry when I think about the Bert Emanuel Rule 11 years later.

The fact is, referees should be held to a higher, more public standard or the league should stop pretending that so much is expected out of them. Apology letters are absolutely pointless and a symbol of everything that is wrong with the relationship between teams and referee crews.

For players, coaches and fans, it is difficult to understand and it should be. Teams have media requirements and players get burnt at the stake of community opinion for every single mistake that they make.

But referees, a group of guys with a giant impact on every game, get to keep this strangely anonymous public reputation. Make a mistake and there are few immediate consequences.

Referees don’t have to face any cameras or sit in front of a room of 30 blood-thirsty writers. Coaches and players get fined if they openly denounce them in any way. At the most, we hear about these awkward and useless NFL letters that we’re technically not even supposed to hear about.

A quick Google search tells us that NFL officials currently earn between $42,295 and $120,998 per season depending on experience and position. That’s not a bad going rate for 21 days of work. It also does not include playoff pay and is a significant rise from the pre-2001 strike numbers when some officials made as little as $24,825 and most held day jobs.

Day job: Mr. Universe

The pay is less than other pro leagues but that is rendered incomparable when you add up days on the road and the amount of games.

So there’s no question that NFL referees are now professional referees of the most popular sport in the United States. It’s time that they’re treated as such.

Bad calls are brushed off in press conferences because they have to be. Coaches are quick to say “Well, the call isn’t what hurt us. It was this…” And that’s fine and often necessary.

While the pass interference call in Sunday’s game took a crucial six points away from the Bucs at the time, their loss was also aided by a ridiculously conservative two-minute offense that settled for a field goal while in striking distance. Good teams don’t lose to the Detroit Lions because of one bad call.

But all too often, the refusal to blame the game on an official means letting them off the hook completely. Of all the stupid letters that the NFL has sent out this year, how many have resulted in anything happening to an official? How many officials have stood toe-to-toe with a head coach and adamantly defended a call that they knew was wrong as soon as they made it?

Exhibit A

Referees have reached a comfort zone where they know that consistently bad calls aren’t the end of the world.

Why can’t we review penalties? Because it would undermine the integrity of a group that has done little to earn our trust?

Where the need to be professional isn’t always there because we rely so much on the media for our opinions and sound bites, and referees have no obligations.

It’s why there was no backlash on the referee who told Aqib Talib [and I quote] ”You play like a pussy,” after Talib approached him to dispute a teammate’s pass interference call. We didn’t even get to know the ref’s name, much less how that had anything to do with a call against Myron Lewis that would also later be determined as incorrect.

The only word to describe a letter that says “Hey, we screwed up your game but there’s nothing we can do about it now,” is frustrating. There’s no reason to send these letters. They’re nothing more than proof that the NFL has no idea how it wants to handle officials.

It’s an amateur way to hold guys accountable without really making them accountable at all.

We should expect more from the premier organization in U.S. sports.

-Bryan