This is a paragraph from an article that I read from ESPN.com earlier today. This maybe should have been a fanshot, but since nobody reads those....here ya go:

"Officials are held accountable for their calls. They are graded on every play of every game," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Monday. "Ed has been an outstanding official for many years, but he will be marked down for this call. Under our evaluation system, an official's grades impact his status for potentially working the playoffs and ultimately whether or not he is retained."

To read the rest of this artice, here's the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3589407

The main reason for this post is because last week we talked about umpires and accountability for their screwups (attn: Doug Eddings) I remember someone saying MLB umpires would never be fined unless they were paid more. I'm not sure of the pay scale between the NFL and MLB, but I certainly applaud the NFL for holding referees accountablefor their actions. They don't  dscriminate either because Ed Hochuli is probably the most respected ref in the NFL. Now it doesn't say if and how much he was fined, but at least the NFL is doing something about refs/umps who make mistakes by implementing a "point system" which could eventually end in their firing. MLB needs to take a page out of their book. This post is more directed towards fielding umpires and not umpires who call balls and strikes.