(Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images)

The National Football League is broken. It’s not the crappy teams playing crappy games (Bengals v. Browns and Redskins v. Bucs this past weekend); it’s not the glossed-over shadow of steroids hanging over the hugely jacked-up players; it’s not Hines Ward’s smug smile. On second thought, it could be Ward’s Joker grin.

            I’m in no fit state to write this commentary right now, bear with me. Less than an hour ago, the Ravens lost a heartbreaker to the Pats in a game fraught with questionable-at-best calls by a supposedly veteran officiating crew. I am, to be utterly honest, a wreck right now. However, taken with that gigantic lump of rock salt, bear with me. Read this, check out the highlights, and decide for yourself.

            The NFL plays favorites. It’s as simple as that. So many penalty and challenge calls are subjective enough that the officiating crew can literally win or lose almost any given game.

            The Pats and Steelers are the largest beneficiaries of this charade, as the league will do whatever it takes to give these teams the chance to win big games. The Ravens, conversely, are not one of the NFL’s darlings. In fact, the Ravens have gotten enough objectionable calls and ex-awful-coach-turned-awful-color-commentator Brian Billick made enough noise about said calls that a vicious cycle exists in regards to officiating in Ravens games.

            The problem dates back years, as far as or farther than 2005, when referee Mike Carey called a record 21 penalties for 147 yards on the Ravens and blatantly blew a fumble/forward pass challenge call that allowed Tatum Bell to take the ball to the Ravens’ 1. On one crucial second-half drive, there were two defensive holding penalties on the Ravens’ nose tackle on third downs that the Lions failed to convert.

            In an effort to keep from going Frank Francisco on this computer and to keep this under 5000 words, I won’t even talk about the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory over the Seahawks, one of the three worst-officiated games in NFL history. Four words: tackling below the waist.

            So let’s just focus on two specific games in which the men in striped shirts indubitably influenced the outcome: Patriots at Ravens on December 3, 2007 and Ravens at Patriots on October 4, 2009.

            In 2007, the Pats were 11-0 and the media darlings behind the NFL’s most prolific offense of all time. The Ravens were 4-7 en route to an abysmal season that finally got the aforementioned Billick canned, three seasons after it should have happened.        

            Following a Stephen Gostkowski field goal with 8:46 left in the game, the Ravens cling to a 24-20 lead against the best team in the NFL. With 1:48 to play, the Pats have the ball at the Ravens’ 30 on 4th-and-1. This is when the insanity starts.

            The Pats hand the ball to fullback Heath Evans, who gets stopped for a loss of a yard and effectively ends the game. But! Apparently, Ravens’ defensive coordinator Rex Ryan called a timeout to the linesman as the ball was snapped. Not only is it questionable whether or not Ryan actually called the timeout in time, but by rule, NFL coordinators are not allowed to call timeouts.

            Following the dubiously legal timeout, the Pats moved the ball to the Ravens’ 13, where they faced 4th-and-5 with 55 seconds to play. Tom Brady throws an incompletion to Ben Watson, and the game is over again. But wait! A good five second after the play was over, Ravens’ defensive back Jamaine Winborne was called for illegal contact, the most ticky-tack penalty in the game, and one that referees whip out whenever they want a rock-solid drive extender.

            Now the Pats have the ball with a 1st-and-goal from the Ravens 8, and Brady finds Jabar Gaffney in the corner of the end-zone on a ball that the refs initially ruled incomplete. Upon further review, and, it should be mentioned, despite the existence of less conclusive evidence than there is that Vlad Tepes was a vampire, the call was overturned and Gaffney was awarded a touchdown.

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