Although the settlement of the NFL lockout is being widely reported as a victory for the locked out referees and football fans in general, a closer examination of the settlement makes it appear that the NFL may have bested the union after all, the 112-5 vote in favor of the new agreement notwithstanding.

Rather than a situation where the NFL gave into the referees after being embarrassed by the incompetence of the replacement officials, it looks like the existing referees were willing to sell out their future colleagues in exchange for job security over the next eight years.

The lockout was never about the compensation received by the officials, and it was only secondarily about the lucrative pension rights that referees had under the previous collective bargaining agreement. What the lockout was about was the NFL’s desire to regain control over the hiring, firing, and deployment of officials, something that it had essentially bargained away under previous agreements.

The NFL has long been unique among North American team sports leagues in its reliance on part-time officials. Most of the current officials have full-time jobs, so their weekend officiating activities effectively give each official a lucrative second job. Under the previous agreement, the NFL was restricted in the number of officials it could hire—it was essentially limited to hiring 17 officiating crews, which meant that in a full week of games, there was only one additional group of officials to spell the other 16 crews.

Moreover, the previous collective bargaining agreement prevented the NFL from hiring full-time officials, and made it extremely difficult to dismiss current officials with which it was dissatisfied. For all practical purposes, the league’s referees, once hired, were able to decide when and if they would step down as officials. In reality, the NFL had very little control over its officials. That it set out to change when the previous collective bargaining agreement expired.

What the NFL was really after this time around was the right to hire full-time officials and to have a supply of back-up officials that could be substituted for regular officials whose performance was not satisfactory to the NFL. In the long run, the league wants to have the same ability to dismiss officials that it has to dismiss players and other NFL employees whose performance is viewed as subpar.

To try to wrest such concessions from the NFLRA, the referee union, the NFL launched an attack on the referees’ lucrative pension plan, proposing that the league’s pension contribution be reduced by 60% and that the traditional pension be converted into a 401(k) plan, which would put the long-term risk of financial viability on the shoulders of the union members.

It appears that the NFL’s real plan was to secure greater flexibility in hiring and firing officials by threatening the economic pocketbooks of existing officials. At some point, it expected the officials to make concessions regarding the hiring of additional referees in exchange for the league’s dropping or modifying its efforts to restrict the retirement benefits.

It also appears that the strategy worked.

In exchange for a slight increase in pay and the promise that their pensions will not be altered until after 2016, the referees agreed to a number of changes in the way in which future officials will be hired.

Although they initially demanded the right to hire even more back-up officials, the NFL will beginning in 2013 have the right to hire three additional teams of back-up officials who can be used to substitute for the regular officials. (Other reports suggest that the NFL will ultimately have the right to employ as many additional referees as it desires.) Although the NFL initially demanded that the new officials’ compensation come out of the pool set aside for existing officials, they “compromised” and will now pay the additional officials out of other funds.

Also, beginning in 2013, the NFL will have the right to hire new officials on a full-time basis. This is a major concession on the part of the NFLRA and will almost surely spell the demise of the part-time NFL official in the long run. By the 2020’s, the notion that the NFL once had part-time officials will likely seem as nostalgic as recollections that the players used to wear leather helmets.

By signing an eight-year contract, the existing referees basically protected their part-time jobs for the remainder of their careers. However, even the current referees lost on the pension issue. Beginning next year, all new officials will receive contributions to a 401(k)-like plan, and after 2016, all NFL referee pensions will be so structured. Referees who reach the 20-year mark in terms of experience before 2016 will lose their current pension rights once they pass that mark.

Apparently, once it became apparent that even the fiasco at the end of the Packers-Seahawks name was not going to induce the NFL to terminate its lockout, the referees union decided to take the best deal that it could.

It’s a familiar maxim that when the NFL goes to court, it always loses. But when it negotiates a settlement outside of court, it always wins. Chalk up another victory for the NFL.

The addition of a second wild card team to the Major League Baseball playoffs, combined with an unusually large number of close division races, has created a blistering array of possibilities, even though there are, as I write this on Sunday morning, only four days left in the regular season.

The possibilities are greatest in the American League where eight teams are still in contention for the three division championships and the two wild card spots, and no team has clinched a place in the post-season.  (In contrast, in the National League, four of the five post-season qualifiers have been established.)

Not only is it possible that all three American League Divisions could end with ties for first place, it is also possible that as many as four teams could end up tied for the two wild card positions.

On September 9, a seemingly endless list of rules pertaining to playoff tiebreakers was posted on Major League Baseball’s webpage, www.mlb.com (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120907&content_id=38029316&vkey=news_mlb_nd&c_id=mlb).

The term “playoff game” is a more narrow term in baseball than it is in other professional team sports.  Major League Baseball uses the term “playoff games” to refer only to those extra games required to determine which teams qualify for “post-season” games like the League Championship Series and the World Series.

Moreover, it has long been the rule that “playoff games” count as part of the regular season, both in terms of player statistics and team won-lost records.  However, post-season wins and losses and individual player statistics are compiled separately from those of the regular season.

For example, in 1959, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Milwaukee Braves ended the regular season tied for first place in the National League with identical records of 86-68 (in a 154 game season).  The Dodgers then won a best-two-of-three-game playoff by a margin of two games to none.  Consequently, the Dodgers were officially credited with a final won-lost record of 88-68, and the Braves, 86-70.  In addition, all pitching and batting performances in those two games were added into the players’ 1959 totals, although the statistics compiled by Dodger players during the subsequent World Series were not.

More recently, in 2007, the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres tied for the then-one NL wild card spot with records of 89-73.  The Rockies defeated the Padres, 9-8, in a one-game playoff, a victory which raised their regular season record to 90-73.  In that game, Rockies left-fielder Matt Holiday went 2-6 with a triple and two rbi’s, which lowered his league-leading batting average from .3397 to .3396, but increased his league leading hit and rbi totals to 216 and 137, respectively.  Holliday’s league-leading totals included statistics from the playoff game.

How the application of the “playoff games count as regular season games” might affect the tiebreaker system can be seen in the following example.

Assume that the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees both drop their four remaining contests, while Tampa Bay wins its final four games.  Assume also that Texas splits its Sunday double-header with the Angels and then takes two of three games in its regular-season-ending series with Oakland.  Add to this the assumption that Oakland wins only one of its final four games, while the Angels win four of their five remaining contests.

Should the above events come to pass, the following would be the end-of-season standings in the American League:

EASTERN DIVISION

Baltimore                  91-71

New York                  91-71

Tampa Bay                  91-71

CENTRAL DIVISION

Won by either Detroit or Chicago with no more than 90 wins

WESTERN DIVISION

Texas                                    95-67

Los Angeles                  91-71

Oakland                  91-71

So who goes to the playoffs?  Obviously Texas and the winner of the Central Division are in.  However, a playoff would have to be conducted to determine the winner of the Eastern Division before the wild card teams could be identified.

Under the rules posted at mlb.com, the championship of the Eastern Division would be determined by a two game playoff series with one team getting a first-round bye.  The team with the best intra-division record, which would be Tampa Bay (which under the above scenario would finish Eastern Division play with a 42-30 record, compared to Baltimore’s 41-31 and New York’s 37-35), would then choose either to accept the first round bye and play the second game on the home field of the winner of the first game, or elect to host the first game (and the second, if it prevailed).

For this example, let’s assume that Tampa elects to take the bye.  The first round game would then be played in Baltimore because it has a better intra-divisional record than New York.  Let’s further assume that Baltimore wins the first game but loses the second to Tampa Bay.

At this point, we now have an Eastern Division Champion (Tampa Bay), but the three teams involved in that Eastern Division play-off series would have now played either one or two more regular season games than any of the other American League teams.  Consequently, when we now move to determine the two teams with the best regular season records among the non-division winners, we have the following standings:

Los Angeles                   91-71   .562

Oakland                  91-71   .562

Baltimore                  92-72   .561

New York                  91-72   .558

If we apply another traditional rule — that winning percentage, not total victories, determines position in the standings — then Los Angeles and Oakland would be the two wild card teams, and the seasons of both New York and Baltimore would be over without any additional playoff games.

Is this the intended result?  Is it fair?  As far as I can tell, the posted rules do not address this issue, although presumably there is a document in the Commissioner’s Office that will eventually surface to provide an answer.

Interestingly enough, the tiebreaking rules posted on mlb.com cited above carry with them a curious disclaimer:  “This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.”

It is hard to believe that Major League Baseball does not control the content of its own website.  More likely, the addition of a second wildcard has created such a bizarre, byzantine world of possibilities that MLB itself is not sure that it knows what the rules are, hence the disclaimer.