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"The NFL has a very sophisticated evaluation system," Frump told me. "Every single play is graded."

Every week, Frump told me, every official's performance on every play is reviewed by league staff members with on-field officiating experience. Further, Frump said, there's "a live evaluation being done by somebody on-site," and the report from the observer is taken into account along with the film study grades.

"Just like the players shoot for the postseason," Frump told me, "everybody is looking for ways to improve themselves, because the grading system determines who goes and works the postseason games."

With so much riding on these grades, there's plenty of oversight and review built into the process. "If a particular call's going to be downgraded, it doesn't just happen with one person," Frump said. "There's a review process which involves a number of NFL supervisors looking at the same play together. There has to be a strong consensus before an official is downgraded."

Yet another layer of control is built into the evaluations. "Those grades are rolled into a report that is maintained by an independent third party contracted by the NFL," Frump said, ensuring the grades are fairly compiled and reported.

If the evaluations are maintained by a third party, though, how do the officials know how well they've done after every week? "There's going to be a grading report that goes back to each official and the crew chief," Frump told me. "You're going to get downgrades. Those are the ones that are most obvious, the ones where there should have been a call and you didn't make a call."

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1...ir-performance