FSN

[PSU213]

The other night I got really angry as I watched Fox Sport Net's "The List," and they counted down the Top 10 officiating "screwups" of all time.

First, I started to get mad when they put Phil Luckett on the list. Sure, the Det/Pit Thanksgiving Day game looked bad, but the league very quietly admitted he handled it right. Then they mentioned a play from later in the year in a Jets/Seattle game. It was a play on the GL where the Jets "clearly" didn't score, but the wings ruled it a TD. In no way Luckett's fault on the blown call, and some C-list "celebrity" came up with brilliant quote "Yeah, after you watched the relpay a couple of times you could see he was short." And we all know the officials watched about 5 replays of the play before ruling...oh, wait a minute. The another guy said "I have no idea what he is doing now, but I hoped he tried a new profession." (FYI, he is a back judge in the league, and before he became an R, he worked a Super Bowl as a BJ).

Then at number 2 they had the "tuck rule" play. Now many may say that is a silly rule, but Walt Coleman absolutely made the right call on the replay. They, however, chose to criticize Coleman about "blowing" the call.

If I were the NFL, I would be mad about a company that carries my games on a different network criticizing the league's officials.

On the other hand, they did have the call by Don Denkinger (in the 1985 World Series between the Cardinals and the Royals), and the US basketball team getting "hosed" against the USSR in the Munich Olympics.

[ljudge]

What's unfortunate about the Luckett incident is from the article I read that year in Referee it appeared as though the NFL wouldn't back him on it. According to the article the director of officating (Jerry Seeman) at the time said he was correct and both Phil and the PFRA asked the NFL to publicly issue a statement in support of Phil and they didn't. It appears as though the NFL was mostly concerned about image on this one. Phil qualified that year for a playoff game and they didn't give him an assignment, but still paid him a playoff game fee of $9,800.

I guess sometimes you gotta suck it up in this business and simply move on.