Referees Have Nothing To Hide. The NFL and NCAA Should Show Every Big Replay Review Live on TV.

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! It’s a great week to do something old-fashioned.

Many thanks to my colleague Eric Boehm for doing a great job with the newsletter last week while I was on vacation. This week, let’s talk about everyone’s favorite thing to complain about: referees. Then we’ll have a last word on the Kawhi Leonard salary cap circumvention scandal, followed by a brief ode to fantasy football.

Speaking of which, it’s not fantasy football, but you can join our NFL Survivor group on ESPN. Click here to join, and if it asks you for a password, it’s “freemindsmarkets” without the quotation marks. It’s free to play, and your prize is a shoutout in the newsletter. Best of luck to defending champ Primetime Paulie Rothrock, who kept his streak going through 13 games last season.

Locker Room Links

• Where does home-field advantage come from?
• The White House put out its own version of the famous Big Ten “Maps” commercial. I want to hate it, but the song is so catchy that it’s hard to hate anything while you’re listening to it.
• This does not bode well for the congressional efforts to regulate the NCAA and college sports: The House of Representatives is canceling two weeks of session.
• Meanwhile, a College GameDay discussion of the legislation led to senators on both sides responding online.
• The huge UMass upset of Rutgers has New Jersey Republicans angry about the $5 million in taxpayer funds that was supposed to help Rutgers build a better football team.
• Pickleball is no longer the fastest-growing sport in the country: It’s padel (which is basically the same).
• Awkward: A developer hoping to bring the NHL back to Atlanta had to clarify the potential team’s status after a positive-sounding statement was rebuffed by the NHL saying an Atlanta expansion team is “not even remotely close to an application phase.”
• A monthly reminder that sometimes fans can bully owners or leagues into doing what fans want: Ken Rosenthal said “the negative environment” at Los Angeles Angels games had an impact on owner Arte Moreno selling the team.
• Elsewhere in Reason, two big features on 9/11′s 25th anniversary: “9/11 Turbocharged America’s Worst Foreign Policy Impulses” and “Post-9/11 Fear Grew the Surveillance State. 25 Years Later, It’s Still Growing.“
• When you have a tweet go somewhat viral, you get to pick yourself for tweet of the week:
  

  ESPN: ditching the bottom line scores ticker because everyone checks scores on their phone

  FS1: thinks it’s important to show you the assists leaders of the Saudi Premier League in the middle of a college football game

  — Jason Russell (@JRussellMI) September 5, 2026

The NFL and College Football Need To Embrace Replay Review Transparency

What are referees so afraid of?

In the wake of feeble Michigan’s controversial Hail-Mary win over Western Michigan, I am not here to jump on the bandwagon calling the game rigged. But the bandwagon saying so is still a problem for college football—and the NFL. The Big Ten should not just release a statement and some video and move on.

The NCAA and NFL should make real refereeing transparency the norm, and always give TV broadcasts access to referee audio during replay reviews.

This is already the standard in ACC games. Just check out this review from a Clemson-Georgia Tech game last year.

A look inside the ACC Replay center for a CRUCIAL review of what was initially ruled a 4th quarter game-tying touchdown

It was overturned and Clemson would tie the game later on.

Watch the end of No. 12 Clemson-Georgia Tech on ESPN & the ESPN App: https://t.co/Nz7AG4DFyf pic.twitter.com/HDG06KnRZn

— ESPN (@espn) September 13, 2025

You could argue that review took a little too much time, but the referees eventually got the call right, and everyone watching live on TV knew exactly why they decided what they decided.

About two hours after the Michigan game, the Big Ten finally released a statement on the ending, including audio of the referee discussion and video of what they were looking at.

A statement regarding the results of tonight’s game between Michigan and Western Michigan. pic.twitter.com/DzJVN2ZLTc

— Big Ten Conference (@bigten) September 6, 2026

That statement included a lackluster explanation of why the broadcast and stadium clocks seemed to be different from the clock used on the replay system. The delayed explanation of what happened allowed for two hours of people on social media calling the game rigged.

Sure, some cranks still would have called the game rigged if the Big Ten had done the right thing and aired audio and video of the review as it happened. But calling the game rigged would have been a conspiracy theory instead of a mainstream opinion.

Legitimacy is so important to sports. Sure, some people like the preordained theatrics of professional wrestling. But fans want to believe in total authenticity—that referees are completely neutral arbiters with no bias or corruption. Any doubt in the result can hinder fan engagement.

(Can confirm the time I was closest to quitting the NFL was after the Lions were brutally and repeatedly robbed by crap officiating during a primetime game against the Packers—naturally I went to a Lions game a month later).

There’s no reason for referees or leagues to be wary of airing replay review discussions live. The ACC is doing it. The Big Ten is already going to do it for some Friday night games—why not all? The United Football League has done this for years, and sometimes even lets broadcasters interview the official who made the call. The NFL should set the standard for refereeing transparency and air replay review discussions live as soon as possible.

The NBA’s Clippers Punishment Is Great—But Not Great Enough

The NBA’s punishments of Kawhi Leonard and Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer for salary cap circumvention are right and just. But there are a few problems with the penalties.

In case you, too, were on vacation last week, the NBA announced on Wednesday that everyone involved in the scandal had broken league rules. The Clippers are losing five first-round draft picks, from 2029 through 2033 (some trades already affected the 2027 and 2028 picks). The team is fined $30 million, and Leonard is fined $700,000. Ballmer is banned from league and team activities for a year. Leonard’s business manager, “Uncle Dennis” Robertson, is banned from doing any NBA business for five years. Other executives are punished as well, and the team will be “subject to a compliance and monitoring program overseen by the league office” for five years.

Those penalties are harsh and well-deserved. It seemed obvious since the scandal broke that Ballmer and Leonard were guilty. But here are a few problems.

Even without the first-round picks, the Clippers can still field a great team. Since the NBA has a soft salary cap (i.e., teams pay a “tax” to other teams and the league when payroll gets over a certain level), there’s nothing stopping the Clippers—except the Clippers themselves—from spending hundreds of millions of dollars on salary and still fielding a high-quality team without those draft picks. I would have liked a punishment where the Clippers weren’t allowed to spend over a certain amount on payroll for a set period of time, but a punishment like that doesn’t seem to be an option for the league under the collective bargaining agreement. Also, are we sure the Clippers would actually follow these payroll limits?

The other problem is that, despite being a harsh punishment that would have owners think twice about breaking the rules, the NBA so far doesn’t appear to be actually doing anything to catch future rulebreakers who do what Leonard and Ballmer did. Is the plan to just rely on the crack team at Pablo Torre Finds Out to find every salary cap circumventer, or is the league going to change its processes and transparency standards?

Lastly, Leonard actually got off relatively easy. He earned perhaps $50 million or more from these inappropriate, no-show endorsement deals—but his only punishment is paying back $700,000 in fines. From the players’ side of things, that doesn’t seem like a huge deterrence.

Regardless, I feel sorry for Clippers fans. The fans didn’t do anything wrong, and since Leonard joined the team all the fans have to celebrate is just one conference finals appearance. Now there’s a cloud of corruption over the team as long as Leonard and Ballmer are involved—as there should be.

The Joys of Fantasy Football

Let’s close with a brief shoutout to fantasy football—keeping friends together with good-natured ribbing for over two decades.

If you have a fantasy football draft this weekend please please please do not forget the most important part – being kind of mean to your good friends

— Andrew Cooper (@CoopAFiasco) September 4, 2026

There are probably at least 10 friends I’d have lost touch with if it weren’t for weekly interactions through my various fantasy football or pick’em leagues. Several more friends I wouldn’t have met at all. I rarely see these people in person, but I’m still excited whenever I hear news about their weddings, babies, new jobs, etc.

Technically, this is all a form of sports betting—but that’s pretty much an afterthought. The point is doing it with your friends, not randoms. How else are you going to spend two years mocking the guy who drafted Kyle Pitts one time? (It was one time!)

Replay of the Week

After all that clock drama, we certainly can’t go with the Michigan Hail Mary—so here’s some amazing defense in the clutch (with an honorable mention to one of the best punts I’ve ever seen).

BAYLOR’S STUFFED ON THE GOAL LINE

AUBURN IS GONNA WIN THE FOOTBALL GAME pic.twitter.com/1V4oTpFLxp

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 5, 2026

That’s all for this week. Enjoy watching the real games of the week. Who needs the NFL in Australia when you can watch the Australian Football League semifinals, and the rest of their playoffs, for $72?

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