NFL Wants Officials to Speed Games Along So Nobody Misses 60 Minutes

I think most fans, even the casual ones, can agree that NFL football games can seemingly go on forever. The league understands this, and when they're not arbitrarily meting out punishments, they're instructing officials to speed things along.

The National Football League has begun rating refs based on how fast games are played - encouraging them to cut down on time-wasting first-down measurements and long conferences on disputed flags.

It's an effort to make the games more marketable, keep TV audiences tuned in, and prevent games from overlapping during Sunday doubleheaders.

The NFL is forever growing the game (see: Mexico, England), so I get that. But the suicide rate for non-Lions football fans is off the charts this fall thanks to the "Five-Dollar Foot Long!" and "Saved by Zero" advertisement browbeatings, which could be mitigated, at least in part, by fewer timeouts.

But if the league is interested in keeping teevee "audiences tuned in," maybe they should address the glut of questionable officiating we're subjected to every week. Affecting the outcome of games due to questionable calls seems to be a much bigger issue for fans than reducing the number of first-down measurements so we don't miss the 4PM kickoffs.

Or maybe that's just me. Nope, just about everybody feels that way.