Who refs the refs?
Sep 25, 2012, 8:33 AM | Updated: 9:15 am
Last night’s Monday Night football game ended with the most controversial call since Athens versus Sparta — last chance for the Seattle Seahawks, no time on the clock, Hail Mary pass, and it’s caught but:
Refs can’t decide – was it caught by the Seahawks for the win or intercepted by the Packers? And eyes of of the world fall on a group of substitute officials, because the regular ones are locked out in a contract dispute, and one official rules touchdown, the other simultaneously rules interception. And in that split second, the mighty NFL, custodian of the greatest game ever conceived by the mind of man is reduced from a sacred American institution to a game of rock, paper, scissors.
“Who do they give it to? Touchdown!” yells the announcer.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy couldn’t believe it:
“Don’t ask me a question about the officials, alright, so we’ll just cut to the chase right there,” said McCarthy.
And even Seahawks fans couldn’t believe it. But they remember Super Bowl 40 when the Seahawks challenged that questionable Steelers touchdown and so they accept last night’s decision as Karma.
That was a game where the REGULAR officials were so bad that four and a half years later, referee Bill Leavy publicly apologized.
But there’s one thing we can be sure of: Just as that apology didn’t change the winner of the Super Bowl, an apology for last night’s game won’t change the winner either.
Football may have become rock paper scissors, but at least it’s not the Tour de France.
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