Sports: Fire the refs?
Congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers for winning Super Bowl XL.
But having said that we have to acknowledge the officiating was poor. One of the guys on ESPN radio said in post-game analysis, at the very least you have to say the refs did the Seahawks no favors.
A quick check on Google News found this item by Jason Whitlock where he throws the flag at the refs. Excerpt:
But make no mistake about Super Bowl XL, the performance of referee Bill Leavy and his crew overshadowed Pittsburgh's heroics and Seattle's blunders.As Super Bowls go, tonight's game would be in the middle third of games. There are games in the top 1/3rd where the game comes down to the final possession or two and the drama is high. The bottom 1/3rd are the blowout games. Steelers won with a bend but not break defense and an offense that came up with 2 big plays that made the difference.
Paul Tagliabue's league has an officiating crisis. Bogus, inconsistent flag-throwing and rule-interpreting is making the national pastime difficult to take seriously. So far, only Joey Porter has demonstrated the necessary courage to address what we all see.
Many of these part-time, 50-year-old referees don't know what they're doing and can't keep up with the action.
posted by Rene at 9:49:00 PM
2 Comments:
I would be anxious to see how the ratings pan out for this game.
While I think Jason was a bit over-the-top in his assessment of NFL refs, there's no doubt that the officiating tilted in Pittsburgh's favor. I don't think it was intentional -- that is, I don't think the NFL said to the officials, "The Steelers must win. The Bus must win. Make it so."
But with a big Steeler crowd, it played like a home game for Pittsburgh. That must have had some influence, even ubsconscious, on the officials.
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