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Officials cost Seattle the game? Whatever
Ray Ratto

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

NFL
So the Seahawks got jobbed, did they? Cheated by the evil Zebras of Death, was it? Denied their destiny by seven men in ghastly shirts and knickers, you think?

OK, fine. I mean, you're wrong, but don't let that get in the way of your good time.

First, a quick review: The pass-interference call on Darrell Jackson that nullified Seattle's first score was borderline -- a little chintzy, but hardly without supporting evidence. The Ben Roethlisberger touchdown was just a difficult call, is all. It looked, according to the best angle offered the television audience, as if the ball might have dented the plane of the goal line, but it didn't help that the head linesman raised one hand in the air to kill the play before converting into two hands and a touchdown. And the holding call on Sean Locklear in the fourth quarter ... well, John Madden didn't like it much, and he's a Hall of Famer, so we'll give you that one.

That all three calls went against the Seahawks kind of stinks for them. It certainly made Mike Holmgren look a little more like Doctor Zoidberg, the mutant lobster/scientist from "Futurama," than he already does, but it isn't the same as proof that the Seahawks would have won the game otherwise.

But as we said, you've got your theory, and you should go with it. You certainly shouldn't feel any urge to send an e-mail to anyone who doesn't buy your premise, because the chances are it'll be ruthlessly deleted. I mean, customer service is fine in theory and all, yet ...

No, let's stop right there. What we have heard, above and beyond the "The stripes were on the take" argument, is that the NFL should have full-time officials so that things like this won't happen again. This is, of course, idiocy of the first magnitude, but let us explain.

Seven full-time officials have the same problem as seven part-time officials. The game is too big and fast and violent and rules-engorged for seven people of any stripe, and an entire year of devoted study in the Johnny Blood McNally Sorbonne isn't going to make the Roethlisberger call any easier, or the Jackson call any less dicey.

You want a goal-line call that never fails? Put a microchip in the ball and run some Vulcan mind-meld machine up and down the plane of the goal line. You want perfect pass-interference judgments? Simplify the rules. You want consistent holding? Robots. You want all penalties to be accurately detected and adjudicated? Put another 15 stripes on the field -- one per potential miscreant.

But you don't want that, and I know this, because I can see into your souls (and maybe running the vacuum to catch the chip crumbs now and then wouldn't be a bad idea). And I know what you want is to squawk about the officials when something doesn't go your way.

You like conspiracies, the unseen hand taking money out of your wallet, turning a push that would keep your kids from having to sell their braces at school for lunch money into a straight loss and your kid lisping like Sylvester the Cat.

It would be different if what you wanted actually would make officiating better, but full-time changes nothing. Baseball's umpires are essentially full time, and does anyone want to review the 2005 postseason for us? Besides, the Doug Eddings/Josh Paul/A.J. Pierzynski foul-tip call was proven through science a couple of months later to have been actually correct. The NBA and the college game got better officiating with two-man crews than they get now with three-man crews (go call Rick Barry and bother him if you want confirmation of that little truth). The NHL has two referees now to go with two linesmen, and they are respected as much as ever -- and we'll save you the snotty metaphor for a change.

And besides, if you think Bill Leavy, the Super Bowl referee, was in the bag, wouldn't he be living somewhere other than San Jose? Like, say, the Caymans?

But there we go, descending into logic again when all you want to do is vent. Well, then, vent away. The NFL is scamming you all, if that's what helps you sleep at night. The league isn't making enough dough as it is (the NFL paid the Rolling Stones only $5 million for three songs, after all), so the suits have to cheese up the games. The league honchos want crooked officials, because they're all in on it, and losing their integrity to a betting scandal is exactly the solution.

Yes, the NFL could add a few extra pairs of eyes, and the league could simplify the rule book by a couple of rural phonebooks or so, and the league could throw in a little extra technology, but I suspect that with all those advantages, the final score would have been Pittsburgh 27, Seattle 14.

Better you should vent at the atrocious Seahawk clock management, and the bad coverage that allowed the Steelers to convert a 3rd-and-28, and blah blah blah-de-blah. The Steelers won because, as poorly as they played, they still managed to play better than the Seahawks did.

OK, except maybe Ben Roethlisberger.

But no, you vent anyway. It makes the day go faster, and it isn't like work is going to be all that fulfilling today. You'll have to go to a meeting, or one of your co-workers is going to call in sick, or you're going to have to hand a C-note to your pal at the tavern because you took the four. Yeah, it's Bill Leavy's fault. If it works for you, we're down with it. It's the Super Bowl, and everyone should get what he or she wants.