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Brinson: NFL, A Billion-Dollar Business, Needs Full-Time Referees

BOSTON (CBS) -- The Patriots beat the Bills on Monday night, but after what was mostly an ugly affair, the poor job done by the officials quickly became the major national story line.

On Tuesday morning's Toucher & Rich Show, CBSSports.com's Will Brinson joined the program and was asked right off the bat what the NFL can do to solve its officiating problem.

"I don't know because we have so many concurrent issues here," Brinson said. "One, that game was so long. They took forever, and there were so many things that the officials needed to clean up because they were screwed up during the course of actually officiating. And then the worst part of it all is that replay didn't even fix it. Like, they took it forever to look at this stuff and still didn't get it right."

Brinson added that the ruling on the inadvertent whistle was a "seat of your pants" type of decision, one not rooted in the actual rules of the league.

The NFL, of course, does not employ full-time referees and officials, a problem that may be at the root at many of the mistakes we see on a weekly basis.

"I know that Jeff Triplette isn't the only guy that wants to be a ref. Surely, there's a bigger employment pool here," Brinson said. "I think part of the problem is, let's pony up and make some guys full time. This is a billion dollar business; we don't need someone moonlighting as a referee in his spare time as a second job. It's unnecessary."

Brinson also lamented the fact that many calls aren't reviewable, and he made a statement that the NFL has been resistant to accept for a number of years.

"You can't do anything? You can do something -- make it right," Brinson said. "Bill Belichick is right. Everything needs to be reviewable."

Listen to the full discussion below:

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