At the owners meeting in the spring, the NFL finally reached the pinnacle of on-the-field credibility. Replay officiating was locked in for three years. That's more than a $10 million-a-year commitment. The officials say their total demand is around $13 million or $14 million.

That's why I don't buy that you won't see regular officials on the field when the regular season opens Sept. 9. Replacement officials might do the final exhibition week, but that's pretty much a throw-away for teams. Most coaches use the third preseason game to see where their starters are.

This is hardball negotiations. It happens all the time. The president of the officials association fires off e-mails to 1,200 replacement candidates warning them how being scabs could damage their long-term officiating future. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue circumvents the bargaining system by sending a passionate explanation of the league's latest offer and how good it is.

Deals don't get done unless both sides have the ability to walk away, and that's what each side is doing. Playing hardball. Still, any time you have two sides ready to dangle their bodies in front of the train tracks, there is danger. The danger to the game is credibility and safety.

That's why in the end, the NFL will settle and the officials will be back on the field. Too much is at stake. There is no logic in investing all that money into fixing two or three plays a game and leaving three hours of calls suspect.

Plus, there is a safety issue. Over the past couple of years, the NFL and the Competition Committee has wisely directed officials to be like flight attendants Sure, flight attendants are supposed to serve drinks and a meal during a flight, but their main job is watching for the safety of the passengers. The same is true for the officials.

Plenty of tapes have been prepared for the current group of officials to watch for the safety of the players. Flag the chop blocks. Watch the cheap shots. Don't allow running charges into the quarterback. If the Raiders, for example, lose quarterback Rich Gannon in a game from a cheap shot, the player and the officials will be blamed whether it's fair or not.

The league doesn't need that. Nor do the teams. That's why the NFL has no choice but to kick in extra dollars to get this deal done with the current officials. But don't minimize the importance of getting a deal done.

What scares me is that many are kissing this off. Calling around front offices the past few days, I keep hearing the same mantra of letting the current group go because they weren't good anyway. Please. How illogical is that?

	Say what you want about the current group of officials, but the NFL, thanks to Jerry Seeman, set up the best feeder system of officials perhaps in all of sports. Many of his former co-workers on the field and from the league office are in place as supervisors in many of the top collegiate conferences. Like them or not, these are the best of the best officials.

Say what you want about the current group of officials, but the NFL, thanks to Jerry Seeman, set up the best feeder system of officials perhaps in all of sports. Many of his former co-workers on the field and from the league office are in place as supervisors in many of the top collegiate conferences. Like them or not, these are the best of the best officials.

They are scouted like players while they do college games. Most, if not all, come into the league with 15 years of officiating experience in high school and college. They are either in their late 30 or early 40s when they enter the NFL.

Each of the new officials has gone through FBI and security checks. They have NFL Europe and Arena League games to test out their talents. It's my opinion that this group is the best of all sports because their union isn't like a union. Each official in the NFL almost has to treat each season as though it might be his last.

That's reality. The NFL office grades their talents, and if their grades aren't good enough to earn an invitation to officiate playoff games for a couple of years, they get a warning that the next season might be their last. More than half of the officials have turned over in the last decade.

Sixty-seven of the 119 officials have 10 or fewer years of experience. They aren't at maximum dollars and they should be in their officiating prime. How many are at the top level, 20 years or more? Only 16. So it's not like every official is going to be making $130,000 a game.

A current nine-year official will watch his salary grow from $64,215 to $95,000 to $128,000 in 2003. Sounds to me as though the league has to put more money into the front end to balance out the package, and that will probably happen when Tagliabue cuts short his trip to Mexico for Monday's crucial, last-minute negotiating session before the replacement crews come onto the field.

The NHL went to the brink of using replacement officials before settling on their four-year deal Thursday. The NFL officials have that in mind, too. You've seen the charts. A 10-year NHL official made $176,000 under the old deal. Certainly, that number grew, so to put the top of the NFL scale of what would probably be half the NHL pay scale is probably a little out of whack.

No, a 400-percent increase is too much. No, NFL officials don't have to be paid like full-time NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball officials. They don't have to quit their full-time jobs and work full-time for the NFL. All those things are illogical, but good officiating has to come with a price, whether it's a 100 percent increase in the first year and 200 percent later on. After all, these prices will be locked in for five years.

It has taken years to set up the way the game is legislated on the field. A one-day seminar and a new order of zebra stripes simply won't work if logical minds are working. Remember, the officials have been working the entire preseason without neglecting their jobs.

When the NBA went to replacement officials, they were whistle happy. They called everything. The speed of the game in the NFL is such that replacement officials will be reluctant to make calls. You see that in first-year officials in the current group. Imagine a first-year referee? It's hard enough for the current group of umpires to get out of the way of plays.

The new umps might be destroyed.

More defenses have gone to speedier players. College coaches who come into the NFL without experience are stunned during the first week about the speed of the plays. College or junior college officials would be petrified.

Though it's true that everyone can be replaced, there is no reason to do that with the 119 current officials. The league is paying $2,000 a game to the replay official who is sitting in the press box. There is no way that the current group of negotiators is going to take $113 more to make calls on the field.

All I'm hearing is negotiating rhetoric. A week or two from now, referees and league officials will be shaking hands and saying how fair the other side was. Then the front office guys can go back to complaining about how bad the officiating is.

It's part of the game.

John Clayton is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.