Post#4 » by TSE » Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:15 pm
There is nothing wrong with the rule! It's actually an extremely good and well written rule. The problem here is that it makes no sense to apply the wrong rule and then say the rule has a problem. "Going to the ground" is a special rule but CJ clearly had made several football moves which DQ'd that rule from being the proper rule. If this was in the middle of the field, it should be a catch and then a tackle if he was touched after his feet left the ground, otherwise it's a straight involuntary fumble, but since it's in the endzone it should be a dead play since the TD is invoked while he's taking the ball upfield after the catch. There is nothing that has to do with "going to the ground" here since that rule applies to guys who go to the ground during the status of possession or not possession, but he had it, then got his feet down, then did a few football moves, and thus that rule doesn't exist for this play.
That's like saying CJ doesn't get 3 pts because he didn't put the ball between the uprgrights and the rule of FGs say that the ball must go between the uprights to count. Well that's a good rule, but it doesn't make the rule stupid if the referee cited that rule as the reason why the CJ play doesn't count for 3 points. That's just human error in attributing a pass play to a FG play which makes no sense. I don't see any flaws in the "going to the ground rule" and I think it's well worded and a good rule in general.
In my opinion the referee should be fired for gross incompetence, because it was so beyond the scope of stupidity to not recognize the very obvious catch and football moves that made the "going to the ground rule" not applicable in any wild stretch of the imagination. And further, if the NFL is unable to find competent referees then the best solution is to hire a game adjudicator, some guy employed by the league that oversees ALL major events in every game and overturns and adjusts for justice when gross perversions of unfortunate circumstances manifest themselves. You could probably get away with one guy overseeing all the games, but it wouldn't be hard to have one booth official for each game if you wanted to make sure the entire game was totally straight fair.
See the way I think football should be officiated would be to have more custom rules in place to keep the game even, so if there is an extremely ticky tack Pass Interference call for 70 yards because a guy touched another guy with his pinky finger, well then the adjudicator can step in right away and declare a compromise penalty and say it's only worth half or ten yards or what not. And he could make decisions quickly and send those down to the referee instantly before the referee even announces the penalty yardage. It would be a way to make the game almost error-free by forcing the teams to win based on play and not random luck of who gets more luck in the officiating department. Like 10% of the game is based on officiating potluck, maybe more than that, since almost any game you watch there are huge calls that one team will get at the expense of another, and with a better process of rules and officiating you could wipe that down to darn near 0%.
