D'OH! Referee's Bad Call Should Equal a Pink Slip

On this rare Sunday, when I actually got to watch NFL football games (cursed stupid work), I sat down and was hoping that there would at least be some entertaining games.

First game was the Bears/Packers fiasco, which was won handily by the Pack. I was pretty disconsolate after that game, but I was looking forward to the Chargers/Steelers game that was to follow.

The game was a defensive struggle throughout, and as the game drew to a conclusion, it was widely apparent to all that the Steelers had an absolute stranglehold on the outcome.

When Phillip Rivers lined up for the final play, he had one goal in mind: take his team nearly 85 yards down the field on one play. This may seem impossible, but who knows?

After the play itself was over, I was in a state of disbelief. Not only had there been a lateral (which was really a forward pass) but also another lateral, and a fumble that resulted in a touchdown for Troy Polamalu and the Steelers' defense.

Needless to say, I was excited simply because I have the Steelers defense in my fantasy league, and with the low quality of my team, I need all the help I could get.

Well, there was an official replay of the play underway the next time I looked at the TV. Huh? I sat there and scratched my head, wondering why the officials were putting so much effort into a call that had absolutely no bearing on the outcome of the game.

I was happy to see the head referee Scott Green come back out and announce that the touchdown still counted, because the Steelers had declined the penalty for the Chargers' illegal forward pass, and then the Steelers lined up for the PAT to put the game on ice.

I then became incensed when the officials decided to huddle up again and discuss the play, which replay had already shown to be a legitimate play. When Greene announced that the TD was nullified because of an illegal forward pass that touched the ground. I had one thing to say: WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?

I could not fathom that the officials could go against the review in the booth and go with their guts. Isn't video evidence more conclusive than a play you got to see once from one vantage point? I certainly thought so, but I guess that Mr. Greene didn't.

First things first: The illegal forward pass (yes, there was only one) was declined by the Steelers. Fine. Fair enough. The problem was that the officials seemed to think there was a second illegal pass, and that it had touched the ground.

The LATERAL that they seemed to think for some reason was a pass (it definitely wasn't) hit the ground, and Polamalu returned it for a TD. Period. They muffed the call, and they should be made to pay for their mistake.

Scott Greene needs to be seriously disciplined, if not outright fired for this horrendous call. He took a call that was not only blatantly obvious, but also completely meaningless, and he completely blew it. No, not blew it. To quote John C. McGinley (aka The Commish), "he typhooned it".

The booth reviewed the call, got it right, and then Greene chose to ignore it and talked it over with the other officials, who were giving more weight to this one meaningless call than they had to the 13 penalty flags they had thrown at the Steelers the entire night.

Who other than a complete buffoon gets an irrefutably correct call from someone with video monitors and common sense and blunder it so badly? This defies logic, and there's absolutely no defense of his choice of gut over video.

If you think this call isn't a big deal, imagine this scenario:

Imagine that you are a stockholder. You want to sell a stock that you don't think is doing well, but it represents a small percentage of your portfolio. You tell your broker to make it happen.

Instead of selling, he sells other stock and buys more of the one you don't like. Then, you lose even more money because he didn't listen to you and acted of his own volition. Would you retain his services?

OF COURSE YOU WOULDN'T! It wouldn't matter how much the amount of money was that you lost. What would matter was that he ignored a black-and-white directive and went on his own accord and did something stupid with your money. What Greene did was absolutely equivalent to this example.

The worst part of all of this is that they got the call right initially when the ref proclaimed that the Steelers declined the penalty and that the TD stood. Once that was said, it should have been "game over, see ya later!"

Instead, a replay apparently isn't good enough for these officials, because they decided to conference over another facet of the play, which was pretty obvious when it happened but became infinitely too complicated in the face of a big conference.

Another boneheaded aspect of this is that the referee ordered the PAT team to come on the field for the Steelers to make the stupid, meaningless kick so that the game could end, but then all of a sudden they had to once again argue over something else.

To me, that is a bunch of baloney. Just kick the damn point after and get it over with. But for some reason, the refs decided that it was infinitely more important that they get a right call wrong.

Another issue that hasn't been getting as much play among the mainstream media is the angle of playoff tiebreakers. Now, the Steelers are reasonably confident that they will be in the playoffs this season. The only question is their seeding.

The seven points that they lost on this play actually have the power to decide the point differential tiebreaker if its needed for seeding. It is the fifth tiebreaker used for division championships, but it is the third tiebreaker used for wild-card championships.

If it gets to this point in the tie-breaking chain, then these officials could have single-handedly blown a call that gives another team a shot at a better seed that the Steelers rightfully could have had.

I am aware of how unlikely this scenario is, but the fact that it is even possible is enough to give me pause. Home-field advantage is a key to any successful playoff run, and it's hard to believe that seven points could affect that, but they do have the potential to do so, no matter how small.

Finally, of course you have the most obvious but also the most hush-hush of all the fronts of this situation: the gambling scene. This cost gamblers in Nevada somewhere around $10 million. $10 million! That's a lot of coin to be decided on one call, and I wouldn't blame somebody who bets for fun who got upset that his bet was effectively declared a loser by an official who clearly didn't have a clue of what he was doing.

Now, I myself don't buy into the view that the NFL takes of gambling, which falls somewhere between "ooooooh, icky!" and "eh, we don't think about it, so it's irrelevant."

I think that people who are casting a suspicious eye at this situation are well within their rights to question the motives of the officials involved. After all, those seven points would have allowed Pittsburgh to cover the spread, and since they didn't get them, anybody who bet San Diego would have won.

I don't for a second think that the referees had any bad intentions when blowing this call, but I can't get out of my head the image of the referee ducking his head under the canopy in the Buffalo Wild Wing's commercial and asking fans what they thought of the play, and deliberately blowing an easy call to suit their desires.This may be a naive visual, but it works for me.

As you can see, there are plenty of angles with which you can look at this situation through. The whole general point, however, is simple: Not only should Mr. Greene be made to pay for overriding video evidence and going with his own incorrect gut (isn't the rule irrefutable evidence to overturn a call on the field?), but the NFL needs to look into this issue and ensure that something like this doesn't happen again.

Situations like this give the NFL a black eye, and if this continues, no amount of concealer will ever be able to cover it up.