Touchception

Words cannot describe my feelings right now. I am so ridiculously pissed off, that this will be very difficult to write. The Packers got royally screwed. There are riots in Wisconsin college campuses. The NFL better get the real refs back now. This is absolute horse crap. The replacement referees have made many small errors and small mistakes, but this lost the Green Bay Packers a freaking  football game. What happens if the Packers miss out on a playoff spot or the Seahawks make the playoffs by one game?  People will go back to this game as a reason. The NFL has maintained that the replacement refs are very capable of performing their job. That is complete BS!!!!!  Countless errors have been made throughout all of the games. I am not saying that the professional referees are completely perfec. They have many famously bad calls. This is also not the worst call ever made, but it has to rank up there.

Let’s flashback to the play in case you were living under a rock and not watching the game. Russell Wilson scrambles around and heaves a pass to the end zone. The receiver he is targeting, Golden Tate, egregiously pushes off of Sam Shields which should have been an offensive pass interference. Every on-screen announcer agrees to this. Let’s move past this obvious penalty that should have ended the game. Packers safety M.D. Jennings leaps for the football and catches it with both hands. As he is securing this to his chest, Golden Tate puts an arm on the football. As they fall to the ground, Jennings has the ball clutched to his chest. Golden Tate has now a firm grip with one hand on the ball. Two referees come running from the different corners of the field. The back judge called it correctly as an interception. The side judge came running in and paused before calling a touchdown. The reality is that both of them made the signal for their respective decisions at the exact time, causing this ridiculous picture.

The Seahawks began celebrating as the stadium goes wild. The Packers are in a state of disbeleif, as the play is reviewed. During the review, tv announcers Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden agree that it was a clear interception. They bring in a retired referee, Gerry Austin, that confirms that it was an interception because M.D. Jennings came down with the ball first, therefore no simultaneous posession as the referees called it. Then he dropped a bomb, saying that the replay cannot determine who had posession of the football. So, what exactly did the referees review? Nobody really knows because the stadium never showed a replay. According to a new rule implemented this year, the stadiums are supposed to show what the referee is reviewing on the jumbotrons so the fans can see it as well. According to multiple reports, that never happened. After watching the replay, the referees came out and and said the call stood. After hearing what the rules were, people expected this, but still hoped that the referees would be able to override that rule.

After all of this happened, all of the Packers and some of the Seahawks were in the locker room. According to NFL rules, there must be an extra point kicked even if the game is technically over. During a post-game interview, Pete Carroll was attempting to get 11 guys on the field for the extra point. For a moment it appeared that they would be kicking the extra-point uncontested. Then, slowly, Packers began filing out to the field. It appeared that some of them had already started undressing as their jerseys were already half-rolled up. They went off to the field, kicked the extra-point and went back to the locker room.

In the meantime, Twitter and FaceBook blew up. There is no other words to describe it. Different trends throughout the game had been started all night about various players and plays. Multiple players from the Packers took to twitter to share their frustrations. Packers T.J. Lang had a few explitive laden tweets that gained him over 45,000 followers, and 30,000 retweets. Here is the cleanest tweet that he had, “Any player/coach in Seattle that really thinks they won that game has zero integrity as a man and should be embarrassed.” Josh Sitton, Jerel Worthy, and Jermichael Finley also had a few notable tweets about it. Aaron Rodgers said in an interview that he was in complete shock that they did not reverse the call after the replay. He may get fined after his interview. Frank Gore, the 49ers running back, tweeted, “We need to start a fund for @TJLang70. Dat dude gonna get fined to the moon!”. Perhaps the most remarkable outcry from this debacle was what Clay Matthews posted on his FaceBook page. Reportedly he posted Roger Goodell’s office number on it to contact Goodell about it. That had me laughing about this for a long time. Almost all of these guys will surely be fined.

The Twitter outrage was not just held to the NFL players. Various NBA and PGA pros tweeted in outrage over it. Celebrities and millions of fans alike tweeted, posted pictures to Instagram and posted statuses or pictures on Facebook. People used it as a peaceful way to deal with their tremendous amount of frustration and anger. Some of these posts and tweets were hilarious, while most were extremely inappropriate due to the swearing or topics that were discussed. Many went too far, including multiple death threats, but for the most part, it was non-violent way to express frustration. The biggest trend was #thingsbetterthanreplacementrefs which went on and on.

Throughout the madness, Mikc McCarthy handled it with an amazing amount of class. He started off his press conference by saying that he would not be answering any questions about the referees in the game. He stuck to his word and had a very prototypical losing coaches press conference. Even today he refused to give the referees the blame for this loss. He is already focused on this week’s matchup versus the Saints.

The reaction from every analyst and sports announcer was unquestionably for the Packers. Trent Dilfer and Steve Young were nearly moved to tears talking about how egregiously the NFL had lost the integrity of the game. Rick Reilly was talking to M.D. Jennings and multiple other Packers in the locker room when the replay came up on the tv. An uproar came through the locker room and he reported that there were multiple things thrown in the direction of the tv.

This story has dominated every sports talk show in America. Even Good Morning America opened with this as their lead story. Odds makers  estimate that over 300 million dollars changed hands thanks to this game. On espn.com fantasy football leagues alone there was over 67,000 leagues affected by the outcome of that one final play. Many people think this is the tipping point for the negotiations between the regular referees and the NFL owners. The regular referees have unprecedented leverage in their negotiations with the owners, which is exactly why some analysts said that the owners would not make a deal this week. They went on to say that Roger Goodell is being blamed for everything, but that he works for the owners. If the owners do not give him permission to make the deal with the referees, he cannot go ahead and make the deal.

These are all valid points, but this is a matter of a few million dollars in a billion dollar industry. This deal needed to get done months ago.  I am not even going to pretend to know anything about what the referees or owners want and the financial ramifications of it all. I do know that this labor dispute has to end now, and that the only way it will is through compromise. I urge NFL owners, Roger Goodell, and the referees to get this issue resolved before another team loses a football game that they won fair and square. I do not care what it takes, but get this deal done to make the NFL relevant again. In the meantime, it will be compared to the WWE. I watch the many NFL games every week, but I vow that I will only watch the Packer game this week.