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Operator error Humans make -- and miss -- calls, now deal with itPosted: Monday January 21, 2002 9:56 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Phil's take, give us yours. Tom Brady fumbled that ball. You know it, I know it and Tom Brady knows it. Regardless of what the NFL rule book states, the controversial play near the end of the New England Patriots' 16-13 overtime victory over the Oakland Raiders in their AFC divisional playoff game Saturday night was a fumble by any reasonable person's standards. The Raiders recovered the ball, and if referee Walt Coleman hadn't overturned his original fumble call and ruled it an incomplete pass, Oakland, not New England, would be preparing to go to Pittsburgh for the conference championship game on Sunday. Maybe Coleman blew the call. Or maybe -- and here's the opinion in this corner -- he got it right, but the rule he had to follow is a poorly conceived one. But whether he was right or wrong, the Raiders have no business grumbling about being robbed. Neither does any other team that loses a game on an official's questionable decision. No game has ever been decided by a single call, just as no game has ever been won or lost on a single pass, pitch or tackle. There are a dozen developments on every play of every game in every sport -- a blown coverage, a late jump on a fly ball, a slow defensive rotation -- that affect the outcome of a contest. In a close contest like Saturday's, change the result of any one or two of them, and maybe the winner becomes the loser. There were 1,000 different mini-battles that could have changed the course of the Raiders-Patriots war. Because of its timing, Coleman's call was just the most obvious one. But losing, especially falling in such a heartbreaking way, tends to shorten the loser's memory. The losing team somehow forgets everything that happened before or after the controversial call. The Raiders, for instance, seemed not to recall that after Coleman's reversal, they allowed the Patriots to move into position for the game-tying field goal, then couldn't keep New England from driving down the field for the kick that won it in overtime. No referee's call had anything to do with that. It's hard to blame the Raiders for feeling they'd been cheated out of something, but it would be easier to feel sympathy for Oakland if a few of its players hadn't gone overboard. Wide receiver Tim Brown, one of the most honorable men in all of sports, sounded awfully paranoid, for instance, when he implied that the officials may have been biased against his team because of Raiders owner Al Davis' long history of clashing with the league. Brown suggested it was odd that neither of the Raiders' playoff opponents, the Patriots or New York Jets, were called for a single penalty when they played Oakland. He apparently forgot that the officials also didn't call Brown himself for holding on the 80-yard run by Charlie Garner that iced the wild-card game for Oakland, even though he had a fistful of a Jets defender's jersey as Garner broke into the clear. Where was the anti-Raiders bias on that play? There was none, just as there was none in the Patriots game. There were just officials, calling the best game that they could, but coming no closer to infallibility than the players do. Referees miss calls, just as players miss blocks, drop passes or draw penalties. That's the beauty of it all, the reason we play the games instead of feeding the data into computers and calculating the winners. Even with instant replay, bad calls will never be eliminated from the equation, and that's perfectly all right. Call Coleman's decision a mistake if you choose to, but remember that the inevitability of human error is part of what draws us to the games in the first place. Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. |
