Calvin Johnson's Non-Catch in Lions Loss: Why The Rules Must Be Changed

Is there anyone (besides Bears fans) that is not willing to admit that Calvin “Megatron” Johnson’s spectacular catch on Sunday against the Chicago Bears should have been a seemingly game winning touchdown. Maybe it bothered me more because I’m a Detroit Lions fan and the thought of us matching 50% of win total for the past two years combined in Week 1 was too much to relinquish. I had nearly chalked up the win in my mind when we held the lead and the ball with under four minutes to play. I guess that’s my flaw though, seeing as we’ve been there multiple times the last two years, only to hand the game over to our opponents. That’s neither here nor there though, as the issue lies in the rules.

There is way too much politics in creating and re-creating rules in professional sports. The idea of any rule in any sport is to ensure that every play is fair and that the team that deserves to win will win. Calvin Johnson came down with the ball obviously secured tightly in one hand, slid down to his butt as both knees slammed the ground, got his free arm down, and proceeded to lay the ball on the ground. There’s no controversy over whether or not he had possession of the ball. Johnson had this to say about his “non-catch”,  ”I figure if I got two feet and a knee down, to me that is a catch that’s why I got up and took off.”

I’m not here to place any blame on the referees. They made the correct call based on the rules. I’m staring directly at the rules committee, not only in the NFL, but in all sports. There are so many instances across the board where a rule is blatantly wrong and causes harm to an individual or a team. It ultimately should come down to right or wrong. If rules aren’t fair, then change them. If you’re not going to change them, allow exceptions if it is clear that the rule will alter the outcome of a competition unfairly.

In football, it is all about possession. If the receiver obviously has possession, then it should be a catch. It’s that simple. If a running back were to take the ball across the goal line, be tackled in the end zone, take both knees and one arm to the ground before the ground causes the ball to be knocked loose from the other arm, it’s a touchdown, because the ground cannot cause a fumble. Johnson clearly had possession of the ball and that isn’t a question in anyone’s mind. I believe the rule is in place for a good reason and the only change to it needs to be allowing the refs to use discretion on whether or not possession was ever obtained.

Again, if you’re going to have rules, don’t let them change the outcome unfairly. We saw this recently in golf when Dustin Johnson literally had a win taken away from him because of a rule that made no sense. He can’t take a practice swing from an area that had a little sand mixed in with the grass, where fans had been standing, because it’s considered a hazard? That’s obsurd and an exception should be made to the rule that was in place.

Don’t even get me started on baseball and how screwed up their rule system is. Nearly every issue has to do with their stubbornness in using instant replay to actually move into the 21st century. Bud Selig just does not want to admit that there is a problem and seems to think that the current system works fine. The problem is that any professional sport is a fan driven game. If there are no fans, there is no sport. We live in the day and age where the fans get to see multiple angles of every controversial call and it is apparent to them what the correct outcome is for any given play. Ten years ago, Major League Baseball could get away with missing calls and fans would not know the difference, but if the fans can sit in their living rooms and blatantly see the correct call, then the correct call should be made on the diamond.

We all remember the perfect game that went awry based on an umpiring blunder earlier this year, when previously little-known Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, saw his chances of being etched into history vanish on the final out of the game. There was no hesitation from umpire, Jim Joyce, or even Major League Baseball, in admitting that the wrong call was made, yet they failed to do anything about it. Perfection is never an option for the human eye, but technology has given us the option to correct our mistakes, yet baseball fails to do anything about it.

No system of rules will ever be perfect and there will be tweaks to the rule systems forever. Even if the rules are changed every off-season to correct problems from the previous year, it doesn’t change the fact that another slew of games went down in the books altered by human err. By human err I’m encompassing both a missed call by a referee and the fact that retarded rules were allowed to remain in place. Some things are black and white and other’s are not. For those instances that are cut and dry, let them be corrected on the field so the correct outcome is reached. Sure the referees in Sunday’s game would probably admit that Megatron completed the catch, but they have the follow the rules they are hired to enforce. If they had called the catch a touchdown, would anyone complain outside of Chicago? Probably not. Exceptions must be allowed to be made in real time or these problems will never end.