Just in time for spoiling only part of the current football season, the real referees are coming back. "Rejoice, NFL fans," says Deadspin. "After 48 regular season games that nearly brought the National Football League to its knees and turned the league's officiating into a recurring national joke, the NFL and the referees union have agreed to a new eight-year deal and the officials will be back on the job." Things were getting hairy, and the episode provides an abject lesson in when it's ok (and not) to accept substitutes. The inexperienced fill-in refs made mistakes early and often. Says Deadline Hollywood: "The officiating farce became a fiasco during Monday night's game between Seattle and Green Bay when 2 replacement refs standing side-by-side made opposite calls resulting in a Seattle win on a questionable touchdown." Daily Kos adds: "All it took was scab officiating that actually deteriorated to the point where a Las Vegas casino offered refunds on bets on Monday night's game." Talk about piling on. The recurring national joke part was handled ably by Jon Stewart, who noted that the labor dispute getting Americans upset "was not the Chicago teachers' strike. And not the riots at the Foxconn factory in China" but the football thing, as Mediaite reports. Jon and his non-brother Patrick Stewart did a sketch where Patrick pretended to be a sub for cast member John Oliver as the "senior replacement correspondent." 

Two celebrities didn't die this week, despite what the Internet said. But only one of them lives on. Which is not as complicated as it seems. Just stupid. For starters, a bogus outfit called Global Associated News generated a false alarm that Eddie Murphy died in a snowboard accident. The shocking non-news went a little viral. "The alleged accident, of course, occurred in Zermatt, Switzerland, where Murphy has been 'killed' about a dozen times in the past, including last month - twice," says GossipCop. "We're not sure why Murphy is such a popular target of death hoaxes, but this new death is just as unfunny as the first hundred." Forbes tech blogger DaveThier explains what happened: Global Associated is so prolific at spewing false celebrity destruction because it's a website that "allows people to plug in a celebrity name, along with a few other details, and generate a fake news story...Who knows just how many of these are produced a day, but it only takes one to catch on to viral channels and make a boatload of traffic." Ah ok. It always helps to understand where the stupid comes from.