New Orleans Saints fans are not particularly happy. That’s not unexpected, since their beloved football team fell at home to the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship on Sunday 26-23 in overtime, a game where LA never led until the final play. Which means that the Rams, not the Saints, will head to the Super Bowl in Atlanta this Sunday. And as much as there’s always next year, the Saints Hall of Fame quarterback Drew Brees just turned 40, and the NFL has far more parity than dynasty – New England excepted – so there’s never a guarantee that success caries through the off-season.
But that’s not the real reason that Saints fans are so salty. It’s the way that they lost, or at least the perception thereof. With just under two minutes left in regulation and the score tied at 20, Brees threw to Saints receiver Tommylee Lewis on third and ten at about the Rams five-yard line. I’ll spare you the play-by-play of the affair, especially since I’m sure a whole lot of you either watched it or had to listen to someone complain incessantly about it, but the refs missed a blatant pass interference on the Rams. So, instead of having first and goal from the five and essentially a chance to run out the clock before kicking a game winning field goal, the Saints instead had to kick the field goal with about 1:45 left, allowing the Rams time to score a game-tying field goal before winning the game in overtime – a period that would never had happened had the refs made the correct call. At least that’s what Saints fans argue, and I would suggest correctly.
That wasn’t the only marginal call of this past weekend, where four teams played for the two spots in the big game. In the AFC Championship, New England benefited from a phantom rushing the passer call on their final drive of regulation, a call that moved the Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady out of a perilous third down and long situation. There was also an offsides call against the Chiefs on the same drive that negated a likely game winning interception, but that call was right – even if it felt a bit petty.
To be clear, the NFL is not denying the refs got this wrong – at least about the defining no-call in New Orleans. It’s also quite clear that there’s basically nothing they can do about it. There is technically a NFL by-law that allows the Commissioner authority to change the outcome of a game because of an extraordinarily unfair event outside the boundaries of normally unfair events. But exercising that authority would be like closing down the government to blackmail the country to build a wall. So that Pandora’s Box will remain closed for the time being.
Now if there’s a rule to running a sports league, it’s to make sure that your stars are the athletes, not the officials. Which is why the NFL is already trying to figure out a way to make sure this doesn’t happen again, possibly by allowing refs to use video review on pass interference calls, something that’s currently prohibited because it’s deemed a judgement call. If they do make that change, this would be yet another on the long list of plays that can be reviewed on video to see if the call was right. That would assumedly get the game that much closer to authentic, where the play on the field was truly reflected in its outcome. In other words, this would help make sure that the more deserving team actually won – which right now Saints fans believe did not happen.
To be clear, there is no way to ensure that refs get every call correct. So at best this moves towards a more perfect union. And some of the most effective tools and technologies – like say goal line lasers and microchips in uniforms and football – don’t even seem be on the table. So this is as much about the perception of getting it right than the reality.
Which perhaps is the key concept here. A football game is much more than a series of plays that end after a scheduled time with a particular score. It’s a story, where each action is dependent on the one before. Where interpretation is an inherent part of the script. Or, as a colleague of mine put it today, a football game is a narrative – and mind you, he’s a Chiefs fan. Part of that story arc is the interpretation and at times imperfection of officiating. And while that can lead to moments like this, where a lot of people think the wrong team is going to the Super Bowl, I’m not certain sports fans would actually want it any other way. I don’t know that they actually want sports to look like a video game or a science project – even if it makes a lot of sense. And I doubt they want to sit through a four-hour game, which is what added reply might do.
Of course right now, all Saints fans really want is to be happy.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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