Super Bowl Officiating comments
 

I have read now in two separate articles in Referee magazine that the NFL has backed the officials for calls made in last year's Super Bowl. The call on the very first touchdown (the OPI) call received a "thumbs-up" from the supervisors at last year's game. It's discussed in this month's edition.

It's still (no surprise) being talked about in the Philadelphia media. Fans and these "radio jocks" went on for at least 20 minutes last week and it happened again the other day. They truly think the officials won the Super Bowl for Pittsburgh....AND THEY SAID THAT!

Just curious....is this dead horse still being beaten (and incorrectly) across other areas of the country?

REPLY: Wouldn't be surprised if it's still regular talk-show fodder in Seattle!

It really isn't...I haven't heard much of anything about it since last spring. Most of us Seattle fans know that the Seahawks just didn't play very well on that particular Sunday.

The trouble is, you can't prove a judgment call was right, especially to biased sports fans. No quoting of rules or comments from supervisors will convince an armchair or studio "expert" that the call was correct. If you show them the rule, they just say "that's never called that way" or "that happens on every play", etc.

Controversy over actual wrong calls does live on (Don Deckinger's World Series goof will live forever for St. Louis Cardinal fans) but the judgment call arguments usually die out after a few months.

REPLY: The one call from last year's SB that was judged to have been incorrect was the ill-advised BBW call made by Leavey against Seattle QB Hassleback after an interception. A recent article about Leavey in REFEREE mentions how he's still upset by the fact that he blew the call.