NFL to blame for officiating problems

There is nothing so wrong with the NFL’s officiating process and bloated rule book that couldn’t be fixed by a small, well-placed nuclear bomb.

For all of the complaining around here last week, and the weeks and seasons before, don’t forget: Many of you asked for it.

Take the replay rule. Please. Twenty-five years later, it now rivals the Great Wall of China as a work in progress.

Recall why the “instant” replay rule was instituted? It was a matter of populist demand, to reverse egregiously wrong calls. That’s why.

But how often is the rule used to do that? Rarely. Instead, it’s most often used to examine freeze-frame, blow-up, super slo-mo images of microscopic minutiae — the kinds of real-time calls that, pre-replay, never caused complaints from fans, players and coaches.

Meanwhile, during the lengthy stoppages, there’s lots of time for the TV announcers to apply this video and debate the call — and come to a firm conclusion that eventually is the opposite of what finally is determined. Even the guesses of FOX’s Mike Pereira, ex-NFL officials’ boss, are as good or bad as anyone else’s.

Thus, in most cases, the NFL’s naïve attempt to remove the human condition and make pure science of officiating only delays and transfers the human element — the subjectivity — that can sustain bad calls and reverse good ones — depending on how you look at it! One man’s conclusive evidence is another’s “maybe,” and always will be.

So much of the angst about officiating, as milled through the replay rule, was never an issue before the rule. So much of the bashing of officials is the NFL’s fault, because these officials are now criticized for calls that once, reasonably, would have not caused a second thought, let alone raised a stink.

Additionally, the dictates of the human condition and the “instant” replay rule have made on-field officials indecisive and hesitant. There are now three huddles after every play: offense, defense, officials.

Stands to reason. When penmanship counts, you write slower. When the penmanship police stand over your shoulder, the pressure naturally becomes unnatural. Who drives better with their mother-in-law in the car?

The replay rule began as — and remains — Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, turned on its creator. We still haven’t found even one fan who would have abandoned football had there not been a replay rule, not the way its most frequently used.

Beyond that, the game has become so overloaded with rules — many admirably designed for safety — that on-field officials are unreasonably charged with using their one set of eyes to serve as four, independent sets, one to look up, one to look down, one to look straight ahead and one to see in super-slo-mo freeze-frame.

There is no simple solution, but it sure would help if somehow the game would restore tackling and try to eliminate the dangerous substitute for tackling: Hitting.

Rather than the NFL mandate that its officials become preventative medicine, health care specialists (in addition to detecting such crap-shoot calls as the “tuck rule,” “defenseless receivers” and to-the-inch ball spots), mandate that players tackle with their arms and not try to separate a ball carrier from the ball by trying to separate him from his good senses.

If players were re-educated to cease attacking, and at top speed, with shoulders, forearms and helmets, fewer players would be moved to donate their brains to science. Football is supposed to cause arthritis in 40-year-olds, not, in addition, brain damage.

The NFL’s officials only can be as good as the league allows them to be, and increasingly the NFL has made unreasonable demands on them, each official ordered to get more things right, while erring on the side of safety.

Commissioner Roger Goodell this week said he’s considering the hiring of 10 full-time officials. Great. What will they do all week? Windows? Hold seminars on the dangers of running with scissors? The officials aren’t the NFL’s problem; the NFL is the officials’ problem.

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