Sports: November 1998 Archives

I am not a Steelers fan. Pittsburgh is a rival of my beloved Patriots in the AFC, I picked them to lose that game in my weekly NFL picks, and I wanted them to lose for every reason possible (despite my parents' families both being from the Pittsburgh area).

I do not believe that games are decided on one play. I believe 60 minutes of plays decide a football game. If you get to overtime, you did not deserve to win. If you deserved to win, you would have won in regulation, by a good margin. If you win in overtime or in the final minutes, you are just lucky. Close games may be seem to be ultimately decided by single plays, but that is an illusion. A team that wins that game is lucky. A team that loses is unlucky. Define for yourself what luck is.

Regardless, what that referee did to Pittsburgh is an atrocity. While the Steelers did not deserve to win the game, they should have been given a fair chance to do it. And their fair chance was taken away. Well, you could contend there is nothing innately fair about a coin toass anyway. It was much more likely, given Jerome Bettis calling tails, that the toss would result in heads than it was that it would result in tails and the referee would call it heads for Bettis. Bettis did call tails, the toss resulted in tails, and the ball belonged to the Steelers.

Before this season, it was unheard of for the NFL to apologize for making bad calls. Now we have three apologies this season (assuming the NFL does apologize for this). Does the NFL need more refs? At least four officials for every coin toss, one to watch one team, one to watch another, one to watch the coin, and one to watch the one watching the coin?

And while it would not solve this problem, specifically, is there any better evidence other than this NFL season for bringing back the instant replay rules in some form?