The replacement officials’ bungling of the final play of the Seahawks’ 14-12 victory over the Packers Monday night was so impossibly incompetent that there was a brief moment when it almost felt like performance art, some sort of bizarre cross-sport homage to Leslie Nielsen’s portrayal of an enthusiastic but distracted umpire in the 1988 comedy, “The Naked Gun.’’
While the call was a joke by at least one definition, it was no laughing matter, something that was emphasized in the serious and smart postgame coverage of the debacle on ESPN and the NFL Network.
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Someone in the media posited that the NFL is taking such a hard line on the minor difference between the officials demands and the league's offer to impress on the players' union that management is willing to destroy the product before giving in to any of the unions. In that scenario, there is no amount of replacement official incompetence which will change the NFLs mind. In fact, the worse the calls get, the better the NFL likes it, as it is now all about positioning for leverage before the next round of contract negotiations. The argument grasps at straws, but straws are pretty much all there are to grasp at.
BO says NFL fans on both sides of the aisle want this resolved soon. I didn't know there were two aisles of NFL fans. What on earth is he talking about?