I’ve never heard as much bitching and moaning from NFL fans post Super Bowl. Everyone seems to have spent Monday around the water cooler belligerent about the officiating from Super Bowl XL. Everyone is of the opinion that the newly crowned Super Bowl champions did not as much merit their crown but bought it instead. And the blogosphere is all in a froth ober it, such as the boys over at Pro Football Talk who posted this photo:

Funny stuff.

Even former coaches have offered up the opinion that the best team went home from Detroit as losers. Such as this former, and much respected coach:

Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl, beating Seattle 21-10 on Sunday at Ford Field in Detroit. But Bud Grant, who took four Vikings teams to the big event, thought the NFC champion Seahawks were the better team, even though they lost.

"If they played a two-out-of-three or three-out-of-five series, I think Seattle would win," Grant said. "I don't think either is a great team."

I'm not going to enter the debate of which was the better team and if the fix was on for the Steelers. I thought the game was awful. I thought the commercials were even worse (save for "The Streaker"). So I really don't want to dwell on yet another b-o-r-i-n-g Super Bowl.

What should be addressed is the antiquity of having over-weight middle aged men try and call a decent game. There should never be a NFL playoff game in which the outcome has been dictated by the officials. And that is happening just far too often within recent memory.

Don't you think?

That component of the game, the game which we all love, needs to be addressed. The sooner the better. The boys over at Pro Football Talk also agree. And they have come up with some ideas that appear pretty far-fetched but should at least merit discussion.

We've previously argued that the NFL should install a computerized system into the end-zone pylons that would determine whether the ball touches the plane. If such a system were in place, one of the most hotly-debated calls from Super Bowl XL (i.e., whether Big Ben got the tip of the ball onto the front of the goal line) would have been a no-brainer. Per the computer system, the ball either went in, or it didn't. Sure, some people would still bitch about the outcome, but it would be another level of protection over and above the frailties of one man making a snap decision and the inherent imperfection of camera angles.

And.......

Here's the biggest innovation we're proposing. Video replay should become an integral tool for the determination of whether the officials got it right. And not just for the stuff that currently is reviewable -- for everything.

The key here is to come up with a quick and reliable way of permitting the replays to be checked. But the answer is easy. The NFL should install at each stadium a secure wireless network that would allow key shots to be immediately fed via a replay official working in the network trailer to a screen that is either strapped to the referee's wrist or palm.

And the referee should have the ability, upon review of the images between plays, to change anything.

For example, on that very questionable offensive pass interference call that wiped out a first-quarter touchdown reception by Seahawks receiver Darrell Jackson, Bill Leavy could have promptly looked at the replay on his Dick Tracy wristwatch and concluded that there were offsetting penalties on the play, since there was illegal contact with Jackson as he was entering the end zone.

It was that phantom pass intereference call against Jackson that I thought laughable. And gave me all the information I need to know now that the NFL is fixed and that the officials can, and will, throw games. For if Jackson was pushing off that what was it that this thug was doing on December 28th, 1975.

The flag is thrown on Jackson but way back in 1975 the officials did not call Drew Pearson for shoving Vikings cornerback Nate Wright just before catching Roger Staubach's Hail Mary pass in a NFC playoff game?

Replays show Pearson and Wright running side-by-side, and then as Pearson "adjusts" to the underthrown ball, Wright somehow flies forward at an odd angle. After making the catch, Pearson looked back for a flag and started celebrating only when he realized he'd gotten away with the most obvious offensive pass interference in football history.

What do you think? Should the NFL overhaul the officiating? How 'bout the SB? Was the Steeler victory earned or did they simply have the love of the refs behind them?

Posted by maasx003 at February 7, 2006 01:33 AM