Nfl Officials Steal Spotlight

Got a whistle? Swell. You’re hired.

Well, those silly, old geezers of American sports, the NFL officials, are front and center again.

Once again, they are being accused of deciding more games than the runs of Terrell Davis, or the passes of Brett Favre, or the receptions of Randy Moss.

The NFL mandarins got rid of the instant replay a few years ago ostensibly because of its excessive cost and its disruption of games, but the real reason they got rid of it is because it too often exposed the continual ineptitude of NFL officials.

They should bring it back.

Immediately.

Faster than Jerry Markbreit can blow a call. Faster than Jerry Seeman can come up with excuses. Faster than Paul Tagliabue can dissemble.

I never thought I’d live to see some pedagogic official actually call pass interference on a Hail Mary pass into the end zone as I did in the waning seconds of Sunday’s Buffalo-New England match.

Not in high school. Not in college. And certainly not in the NFL.

But I should have known better in the latter, having watched NFL officials up close for the past three decades tarnish so many games.

I should have known they are capable of incompetence beyond comprehension. These dullards can’t even get the overtime coin flip right, as was the case in the Thanksgiving Day game between Pittsburgh and Detroit. Why would I think they would prudently be able to refrain from their natural law-and-order, I’m-in-charge instincts to drop a flag on a Hail Mary play in which players from both sides are furiously jostling for position? Why would I think they could keep their intrusive, meddlesome selves from deciding the outcome of another game?

I’ve never seen a call made like that in such a circumstance, but it never should have had to be made in the first place because on the game’s previous play the officials gave New England, on a fourth-down pass, a first down even though its receiver clearly caught the ball out of bounds.

And the NFL hierarchy becomes enraged when sports talk show zealots keep intimating that gambling hanky-panky, no pun intended, might have something to do with the spate of bad calls?

I doubt is the case, but it’s indisputable millions of dollars shifted hands when New England, a point and a half favorite, emerged victorious by four over the Bills only because the NFL officials once again embarrassed themselves.

I’ve been saying for an eternity that these insufferably nit-picking, let-me-decide-the-outcome-of-a-game-rather-than-the-players, drop-a-flag-every-chance-I-get-to-get-my-mug-on-TV group of myopic bumblers just might be the worst arbiters on the planet Earth.

Where does the NFL find these yokels who have become such an annoying nuisance in almost every game I’ve watched this fall? Did they raid the jurisprudence system of Third World countries? Did they decide to hire all those misfits who failed auditions to appear on the Howard Stern Show? Did they pluck off the street all those unemployed Kofi Annan UN inspectors rejected by Saddam Hussein? Or do they randomly pull out of the stands before each NFL game six volunteers who all solemnly admit (a) they have poor eyesight (b) they are in poor shape, (c) they have poor judgment and (d) they have a poor understanding of the game of football.

Watching NFL games long has been excruciating enough as it is without a Los Angeles affiliate to stir my passions and with all those cornball self-congratulatory antics among the performers, but now I’ve found the exercise almost unbearable because of the wayward deportment of the officials that has reached dizzying new depths.

I dream of that blessed day when I can watch an NFL game without almost every kickoff or punt return being called back because of a perceived illegal block, or without phantom holding calls, or without marginal pass interference calls, or, indeed, without the officials playing a determining factor in the final score.

I’ve always felt the NFL officials easily have been the most incompetent working major league sports, but this year they’ve surpassed even past ignominy, rendering enough blown calls week after cloying week to make one wonder why their boss back at 280 Park Avenue in New York, Jerry Seeman, doesn’t cashier the whole lousy bunch.

Alas, Mr. Seeman was once one himself, a notorious TV ham who was inclined to drop his hanky at the sight of an imagined misdemeanor, and this awful collection he’s put together has been a dark commentary on his misguided leadership.

It’s become quite obvious that the NFL officials are trying to live up to Seeman’s lowly standards. Unfortunately, Seeman was a guy who savored his TV time and habitually called ticky-tack penalties.

Seeman has all sorts of worthy successors in guys like Markbreit, Johnny Grier, Tom White, Bob McElwee and the notorious Dick Hantak, whose flag-obsessed crew you swear was recruited from those misfits on the Mariel Boatlift and is Castro’s revenge on America.

The NFL has made some inane decisions across the years. Not having a team in L.A. is one, but miking the referees has to rank as the worst. They now act like they’re doing a take for Steven Spielberg when they’re announcing an infraction.

I hear Markbreit is retiring this year. Good riddance! He has had a longer TV life than Johnny Carson.

Where’s the accountability for all these inane calls?

The same awful officials seem to pollute the NFL scene every season.

Players get put on waivers, or fined for illegal hits.

Shouldn’t officials face the same punishment for miscalculations that can cost a coach his job?

As I’ve long said, the NFL should hire full-time officials, as there are in the NHL, NBA and Major League Baseball. These weekend warriors they’re employing now should stick to teaching school, or quoting stock prices, or practicing law, or doing whatever they do when they’re not on football fields around the countries on Sunday afternoons doing nothing more meaningful than inciting outrage.