UPDATE: NFL upholds Seahawks victory.
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It’s the morning after and the buzz about the Seahawks-Packers debacle has hardly subsided. The worst case scenario has happened for the NFL: the replacement officials have cost a team a game.
The uproar can be heard from coast to coast.
Driving home last night, I wondered why the Packers’ M.D. Jennings didn’t bat down the pass in the end zone instead of trying to intercept it. Isn’t that what you’re taught to do in that situation? If he does, Golden Tate doesn’t have a chance to make a catch and the Packers win. The MNF game would remain controversial, but at least the outcome wouldn’t have been questioned. The Packers would have won 12-7 and everybody in Seattle would be complaining about the Seahawks’ offense and debating whether rookie QB Russell Wilson is the real deal.
A caller on a radio shows likened the NFL to WWE. You know, he’s right. The integrity of the game has clearly been compromised. You have no idea how certain plays are going to be called. It’s comical to a point. If the NFL refuses to make a deal with the real refs, they should put the replacement guys in clown uniforms.
Here’s another good point made by another caller: Why didn’t the NFL take time to train the replacement officials? They knew they were headed for a lockout — at least it was a real possibility that a deal would not be reached — and they should have been better prepared. They should have had a plan in place. They should have trained backup refs. Now, they’ve made themselves a serious mess. Nobody’s blaming the replacement refs. Now, all eyes are on Roger Goodell. What will the NFL commissioner do next?
Just clicked on the TV and ESPN’s talking about Chaos in Seattle. They’ll be talking about it, ad nauseam, all day.
In the meantime, here’s some other links about the Golden gaffe:
Mike Silver of Yahoo! Sports, who wondered if reporters could boo in the press box on Monday night, dined with Seahawk Marshawn Lynch at the Metropolitan Grill in downtown Seattle after the game.“We didn’t win that game,” someone at the table said, and nobody made a peep to challenge him.
Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN.com says the refs are losing control and that the NFL ought to reverse the call and award the game to the Packers.
Here’s some twitter comments from Packers and other NFL players. Warning: lots of expletives. And here’s more comments.
Here’s a photo that shows Golden Tate’s right hand is not on the ball. Simultaneous possession? I know that’s the call, but isn’t it possible that a receiver can make a one-handed catch. Tate’s left hand and arm were clearly on the ball. Can you have simultaneous possession with one arm on the ball? Just throwing it out.
Simultaneous confusion? Here’s a video of the refs, one signaling touchdown, the other calling a touchback, indicating that the pass was intercepted.
The controversy won’t go away, and everybody’s wondering what steps the NFL will take to get the real officials back on the field.
With both sides of my family hailing from Wisconsin, the pride we take in the Packers is something that I associate with a feeling similar to old holiday memories and with everyone being together in the same room. Whether they were winning or losing, you didn’t have to know anything about football to enjoy a game, it just meant that the family was gathered around the television, getting fatter.
Whether on fold-out tables there in the living room or on the kitchen table or counter-tops, high calorie super unhealthy fried snacks or greasy potato chips slowly soaked napkins and place settings with oil, and everyone would shamefully admit that they were so stuffed on snacks that they couldn’t even think about eating the main course, even though everyone in my family typically said this while they were further gorging themselves.
In Brett Favre’s hay-day, and particularly 96-97, the Pack became synonymous to a team of super-heroes in my eyes. I didn’t need to know the dynamics of the game, what a first down was, what the line of scrimmage was, or what a wide reciever did. All I needed to know was that we had Reggie White, Gilbert Brown, Brett Favre, and Coach Mike Holmgren. They were like the X-Men of football.
Visiting Lambeau Feild as a child, I was completely oblivious to the awe that my stepfather was experiencing as he glimpsed wall to wall in the inside halls of the stadium where the pictures of Green Bay legends were hanging. I didn’t understand the significance behind getting a snap-shot of ourselves beside the likenesses of Vince Lombardi and Curly Lambeau, or why it was okay to wear a cheese-head in this town when certainly I would get slaughtered by any of my classmates back home for even owning one.
These past few years as a Packers fan, and now with Aaron Rogers having stepped in to replace the legendary figure of Brett Favre like the next Green Lantern replacing Hal Jordan… (sorry for the super-hero reference)… a certain undeniable nostalgia has been waking in me again. I have been a bit happier in some way. There is some kind of feeling of comfort in knowing that you have a good team, and a dependable organization to look out for something that hits so close to your heart as a favorite football team. Also, we have a monster line-up again. Clay Matthews, Rogers of course, Greg Jennings (if he wasn’t rendered as useful as Elizabeth Taylor or Betty White due to some kind of radical back injury requiring him to wear a diving board under his jersey for support)
Then last night happened.
I was cringing through the entire game. How many penalties were going to be called on these teams? How many mistakes were they really making. Why were people getting away with ridiculous glitches and insane over the top fights? Why couldn’t Greg Jennings bend over to get a bouncing football for an interception… oh yeah, the diving-board in his back pocket… At one point I was thinking (as I slammed a beer in anger and blood-thirst) “I don’t care what team scores, just as long as somebody *#(&@ scores.” Actually I said that out loud in the Boom Room at the Point Casino among a heavy crowd of Seahawks fans. I had to grit my teeth whenever it looked like we were about to go somewhere. I had a bloody tongue by the end of the night, but thats all it was the whole time, me about to scream over someone about to take off but getting their wings clipped as soon as they took a breath.
How about that famous last minute nail-biting touchdown that we almost “AWWWWWWWW, NOTHIN!” How about we catch the ball in the end-zone for an interception against the Seaha…”OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD!!!!!” Two calls are made simultaneously by two random highly unskilled mimes like something out of an episode of The Three Stooges. “ITS GOOD!” “NO TIME!” Oh, just beautiful beautiful anarchy. I’m praying for the left side of my body to go numb so I can shout out “I’m having a stroke!” and watch as nobody bothers to do anything because they’re all screaming victoriously at their cheap touchdown that could very well have been anything at all. Betty White grabbed that ball and had it turned around at one point in mid air until, I don’t even care anymore. Take it. Take the win Seattle. It’ll come back to haunt you. Severely. You will know the type of pain I’m experiencing right now, and let me warn you, it isn’t jealousy or sour grapes… its disgust. Its sickening sickening disgust and dissappointment in … the NFL? The replacement refs? The Stock market? Barrack Obama? A butterfly flapping its wings in California? The G.O.P? The first hour of “The Dark Knight Rises”? Katie Holmes for leaving Tom Cruise? Mark Zuckerberg for letting the CIA spy on me using Facebook? Damn you Butterfly Flapping your wings in California!!!