From the cheap seats

‘What a bad call!’

That phrase has been uttered so many times in the past two or three weeks that it seems to have lost all meaning.

There have been four games that have come under close scrutiny by the fans, commentators, announcers, coaches, players, reporters and even league officials.

The NCAA National Football Championship game, the Atlanta Falcons/Green Bay Packers NFL Playoff game, the Tennessee Titans/Pittsburgh Steelers NFL Playoff game, and the now infamous New York Giants/San Francisco 49ers, NFL Playoff game are very controversial games of late. Some of them should not even be as controversial as people make them out to be.

The NCAA Championship game between the University of Miami Hurricanes and the Ohio State Buckeyes was an example of the ref making a bad call but not really affecting the game.

The game was a classic. It was everything you could want in a national championship game. It was the best offense in the nation versus the best defense in the nation. The game went to overtime and had many big plays.

In the first overtime, OSU had to score a touchdown just to play another overtime because the Canes scored on their first possession. The Canes forced the Bucks into a fourth down situation where they had to get a touchdown. The pass was incomplete and fireworks started to go off and the coaches came onto the field. But wait, there was a late flag. Pass interference was called.

There was no pass interference on the play, but there was defensive holding, which would have been the same amount of yards penalized.

The call was wrong, but the end result was right.

(Note: In your November issue of The Colonnade, I predicted that the OSU Buckeyes would beat the Oklahoma Sooners for the national title. I wasn’t entirely correct but I did pick the winner of the national championship.)

In the Falcons versus Packers, there was no called penalty in dispute, but instead there was dispute over a penalty not called. On a punt return, the Falcons blocked a Packer into their punt returner. When this happened, the football bounced off the Falcon that was blocking, and should have made the ball belong to the Packers and the play dead.

What really happened was it was ruled to have hit a Packer that makes it a live ball. The Falcons recovered and went on to score their third touchdown.

Mike Sherman, Packers coach asked the referee if he could challenge. The ref said that it was a non-reviewable play because of the punt return interference. The play was reviewable, if Sherman would have asked the ref to review whom the ball made contact with, then it would have been reviewable.

The Titans and Steelers game was easy to understand why the call was made at the end of the game. Two words: good acting.

The Titans kicker found himself in a unique situation. Not only did he get a second chance to win a game, he got three. In overtime, he missed a field goal, but a Steeler defender slid into him in an attempt to block the kick. The kicker went down with as much gusto as a professional wrestler. Running into the kicker was called.

The ref made a judgement call and the kicker got another chance. He made the field goal and the Steelers’ season is over.

The worse thing an official can do is admit that he or she was wrong.

That brings us to a game that the officials did admit to being wrong about. The Giants versus the 49er’s was until the final snap, one of the best playoff games I’ve ever seen.

Instead of trying to cram it all right here. Read next week for an in depth insight into the game.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Jan 17 2003. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry