Was that referee stupid, or just incompetent?

I impressed the heck out a friend a few years ago during the strike by the NFL referees.  I predicted that the strike would continue, and the NFL would use replacement referees, until the replacement refs made a clear mistake that obviously cost a nationally popular team a victory.  Sure enough, the replacement refs blew the “Fail Mary” pass by the Seahawks and cost the Green Bay Packers the game; the next week the real refs were back in place and the replacement refs were back working at McDonalds or where ever they came from.

But the difference between the “real” refs and the replacement refs is a narrow one.  There were a series of disputed calls in the post-season, and now once again the real zebras have given the Seahawks a win they don’t deserve. On October 5^th the back judge in the Lions/Seahawks game clearly blew calling an illegal “bat” on the Seahawks, giving them the ball instead of giving the Lions the ball on the 6 inch line. 

The NFL has said that the call was clearly incorrect.  I haven’t heard what the official explanation is of the call is, whether the referee was unaware of the bat rule (I thought the only “illegal bat” was the one used by George Brett) or whether he thought the player was not trying to intentionally bat the ball out of bounds but the contact was inadvertent.  If the former, it is an indictment of an overly complicated NFL rule book that is replete with “tuck rules” and definitions of what constitutes a “football move.”

That leaves the latter, but a) the player said he was deliberately knocking the ball out of bounds, so it would be a bad interpretation by the ref, and b) if you watch the tape it is inconceivable that the contact was inadvertent.  The player reached out and pushed the football towards the end line of the end zone with no other possible motive than pushing it out of bounds.

The NFL maintains the play was not reviewable, which raises the question: why? It was the last two minutes of a game; the ruling was likely determinative of the outcome of the game; the ruling was clearly wrong.  Why can’t the referees talk amongst themselves, possibly look at some footage, talk to experts at NFL HQ, and GET THE CALL RIGHT?  Football is unlike baseball in two ways; in baseball, they replayed the rest of the Pine Tar game several weeks later, but you couldn’t replay the end of a football game at a later date; and a blown call costing a baseball team a game only screws up 1/162 of the season, but each football game is 1/16^th of a season.  Given that the marginal cost of an erroneous ruling is high, and the marginal cost of reviewing the call is low, get the call right.

The NFL says the ruling was not reviewable because it was a “judgment call.”  But the NFL agrees that there is clear evidence that the referee’s “judgment” was incorrect, which means it wasn’t a judgment call.  A judgment call means different people could interpret events differently (was a ball two feet over a receiver’s head “catchable”?).  The NFL says that the ball was batted out of bounds intentionally, so there was no “judgment” needed.  No Seahawk fan could credibly argue that the bat was unintentional.

Seahawk’s coach Pete Carroll said he was unaware of the bat rule and it was a smart play.  This reminds me of the mix-up several weeks ago when Eli Manning told running back Rashad Jennings NOT to score a touchdown because the “smart” play was to run out the clock.  The Giants took a field goal instead and then allowed the Cowboys to score the game winning touchdown.  Players are trying to be “too smart” by not scoring when they have the chance, or batting a ball out of bounds instead of recovering it as a fumble.

There may be rare situations where you can run the clock down to 0:00 by not scoring, and if you have a lead then do so and take the W.  But not scoring a touchdown because you are afraid that in under two minutes the other team is going to drive for a touchdown, recover an onside kick, then drive for another touchdown, well that means you have absolutely no confidence in your defense.  If the other team hasn’t been scoring two touchdowns every two minutes during the first 58 minutes of the game, why would they start in the last two?

The complexity of the NFL rule book, which confounds even coaches (except presumably Bill Belichick) is in part due to players trying to game the system.  The “tuck rule” was repealed, but why was it adopted in the first place?  Why did the NFL allow teams to have control over the balls they would use in the game, giving them the opportunity to deflate them (or over inflate them) if a quarterback happened to have a preference (I name no names)?

Why define a catch as being in possession of the ball long enough to make a “football move”?  A catch should be a catch.  What’s a catch?  It’s a judgment call.   Apparently it’s okay to have those.