Ed Hoculi miscalled a fumble as a forward pass, Denver scored on the next play, and won the game, San Diego should have won.

I wish the calls were perfect, but bad calls is not new to the NFL. Quite frankly, if a team loses, they lost because they did not do their job. The Packers are a prime example. Only an idiot would claim they lost that game due to the last call. They could not run the ball, they could not pass the ball, they were held to 12 points when they have one of the most prolific passers in the NFL. They lost because they could not score, not because a ref may have blow the last call. Unless there is clear bias in the refs calls, bad calls are a part of the game, and the few missed calls or questionable calls do not dramatically change the game as it is up to the players to win, not to rely on perfect game calling. There may be more of them now, that simply means teams must rely on actually playing good football in order to win.

I love the fact that Roger has shut down talks with the ref union. The demands they are making are ridiculous and they deserve to stay at home this year. The unions, all of them associated with football, have been driving up the cost for years. Hell, it takes as much money to park at a football stadium as it does to buy a Gamecock stadium ticket. I hope Roger stays the course and tells the refs and their union to shove it where the sun does not shine. The games will continue to be played, the right teams will continue to win, and all of football fans will continue to watch. We may whine a bit more, but NFL like will go on and will go on fine without the normal refs.

While it is nice to forget about the election for a few moments and focus on something of no importance whatsoever, I must say this play last night is a tempest in teapot. It was a bad call yes. Was it so horrible that it belongs in its owned hermetically sealed room in the basement of the NFL Hall of Fame? No. I suspect much of the hollering by the media today is mainly about supporting the referees union in their battle with the evil capitalist owners.

( None of which is to suggest that the owners aren’t being incredibly stupid to put the reputation of the league at risk over relative peanuts when they are raking in hundreds of millions. )

I’m sure one of the nastier personal injury law firms has a tape of every serious injury that has happened in the NFL thus far. They are watching them w/ an eye to how this can be blamed on the replacement officials.