MORGANTOWN — While his officiating brothers were waiting around for their union and the National Football League to work out a deal, one member of the union spent some time playing softball.

“Slow pitch,” Fred Wyant admitted. “But last Thursday I pitched 21 innings, and in one game I had a shutout.”

No big deal, you say.

Fred Wyant is 78 years old.

Wyant, of course, is the former West Virginia University quarterback from the first Golden Age of Football at the school who went on to have a successful career in Morgantown while also becoming one of the legendary officials of the NFL.

Wyant worked the NFL after his playing career with the Washington Redskins ended after two passes, one a 17-yard completion. He worked from 1966 to 1992, 16 of the years as a referee.

And like everyone else in America, Wyant was happy to see the two sides reach an agreement, although he was somewhat amazed that it took an official blowing a call to create such a poisoned atmosphere that the league could no longer keep its lockout in place.

“I knew one of those officials would eventually lose a game,” Wyant said during the hours it became obvious that a deal would be struck in time for the officials to return this weekend.

But somewhere along the way, the furor that grew out of that miscalled touchdown/interception that cost the Green Bay Packers a victory over the Seattle Seahawks was a bit misplaced, he felt.

“The announcers went on and on about it after the game, everyone raising Cain, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Is the Green Bay quarterback still alive?’ I mean, he was sacked at least eight times. If they are looking for anything, it shouldn’t be a new group of officials. They should be looking for a new offensive line,” he said.

Indeed, with former WVU pass rusher Bruce Irvin, Seattle’s No. 1 draft pick, recording two sacks, Packer QB Aaron Rodgers was battered so badly that he had to be glad it wasn’t replacement trainers on the sidelines.

The fact of the matter was that the replacement officials never had a chance to succeed, and every NFL official knew it. This is not an easy job, and it is done under the unblinking eye of the replay camera and before millions upon millions of people, many blood-thirsty fans.

Wyant recalls when replay came in and, to be honest, he’s not exactly a fan of it.

“Before replay they did a survey, and the officials were correct 97.3 percent of the time. After replay came in they were correct 87.3 percent of the time,” he said.

The biggest problem the replacement officials faced was that they weren’t ready to be NFL officials.

“Those were officials from Division II and III, where they don’t even have scholarships. It takes five years to develop an official so that he can officiate comfortably in the National Football League. That’s what it was when I was in there. You had to be able to stay in there that long to be effective,” Wyant said.

“These guys were in there three weeks after officiating games like West Virginia Wesleyan, with maybe a few hundred people at the games. I was told once West Virginia Wesleyan didn’t draw enough fans to pay the officials.”

The speed of the game, the pressure from the crowds ... all of that worked against the replacements’ success, and that was only part of it.

NFL rules are not as black and white as you would like them to be.

“The main thing is the interpretation. You have a rule written this way and that way. It’s like a sports writer writing an article and someone saying this or that about it and the writer saying, ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’” Wyant said.

“They do that in the NFL, even when I was there. They told you the way they want these things called.”

Like the touchdown play in the Seattle-Green Bay game, where there was obvious offensive pass interference.

“I heard one of the announcers saying coaches told them there can be no foul when there’s a scramble like that. What a bunch of horse manure. A foul is a foul, and they can call it,” Wyant said.

Wyant had his own situation with a rule misunderstanding during his career, in a game no less between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns. Time was running down and the game was tied with the Steelers kicking off.

“On the return, somebody shoved one of the return man’s blockers into him, and he fell backward and lost the ball,” Wyant recalled. “I’d never read about this in the rule book, and it was never covered in any clinic I was at.

“I know if I come down on defense and touch you and you go down the ball is dead right there, but I don’t know if the ball is dead if I shove a blocker into the ball carrier and he goes down. I don’t know if he can get up and keep running, so I call the play dead before the fumble because the only rule I know is if the defensive guy knocks you down, you’re down and the play is dead.”

Well, to make a long story short, Cleveland, of course, recovered the ball in field goal range with a chance to win the game, but Wyant gave it back to the Steelers and Cleveland wound up losing.

“I didn’t have any of the Cleveland games for years after that,” Wyant recalled.

Email Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com or follow him on Twitter @bhertzel.