OPINION:
National Football League officiating this season has been the worst ever.
No excuse.
The New Orleans Saints have a right and obligation to sue the owners after Sunday’s atrocity, but of course, the Saints aren’t saints and won’t sue the owners, because the Saints are owned by an owner.
No owner wants to soil the fraternity’s carpet. So the owners go on ignoring all the replay technologies now available at the snap of a finger.
For those of you who came in late — or don’t give a flying pigskin about watching grown men fight over a laced spheroid — here’s what happened:
The Los Angeles Rams beat New Orleans 26-23 on Sunday, as the digital history screen will relate, with the help of a tear-your-hair-out-because-it-was-so-obvious pass interference that every living entity within a billion light-years of earth saw — except the officials on the field where the game was being played.
Why didn’t officials consult the playback “film” that the cable network was showing the rest of the sentient world?
Not in the rules.
So what you saw or missed was the end-product of the monumental arrogance of the owners who decide these things. They are telling their audience to go have intimate relations with themselves.
Unbelievable.
These are the same owners who sweated bullets over losing audience when players were shown taking a knee during the singing of “The Star Bangled Banner.”
So what’s to be learned from this? That we have met the enemy, and it is — OMG! — we fans.
We keep watching “professional” football (though it’s not a profession in fact), and we do so, knee or no knee, incompetent officiating or not.
Why?
Because watching this game played at this level is irresistibly fascinating to enough of us to allow the owners to glance our way, smile and present us with their collective, functionally-erect middle digit.
Grrrr.
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