The Whole Bad Call Thing In The NFL
By: Jeremy T. Ballreich
Every year, almost every team has had the Tuesday I’m sorry call from the NFL Offices. Why do they wait until Tuesday? The weeks betting books has closed all bets and the last game of the week was played the night before. So all statistics are final.
Why do I bring up the gambling, trust me, I believe there’s a connection. The NFL has shot down every chance to make NFL Referees full time employees, pay them worse than substitute teachers! Leave them as part time with no major benefits. So eventually, they can and will need to supplement their income. It looks like maybe a bad call or ten is the way.
We see bad game changing calls in the final 2 minutes of games, in a good year, 42% of the time. Whether it was a no call, obvious bad call,or an agregiously horrible call. Where everyone in the Nation points it out. There 276 regular season game! 42% is 115 games with possible bad/no-calls that change a game!
Well, hopefully, we will finally see a change about it. A good portion of the owners were up in arms about the calls in the 4th quarter and overtime of the Rams vs. Seahawks game. Enough that newly appointed to the NFL Competiti9n Board and Detroit Lions Owner (Sheila Hamp) has proposed an NFL Sky Judge to correct the horrible calls. They already have one in college, and it doesn’t slow the game down as much as people think. She may actually get this vote done as well!
What’s a Sky Judge, you might ask? It is a head official. Paid by the NFL to sit in the booth with a monitor, an pay attention to every game. When a call is made, it will be at their discretion to call down and announce a review, or let the game play as called. The Sky Judge also, only has 30 seconds to review. That way game play isn’t adversely affected by this review.
I think it is about time to let the newer technology help out more than just how fast a QB threw a ball to his WR.
I truly hope this rule passes. Because I think it will greatly help. I also believe no one other than the head of the NFL Referees, the NFL Commissioner, and the Sky Judge are the only 3 people they should know who the Sky Judge of each game is.
Thanks For Reading!!!
