For my part, I decided after the San Francisco/Seahawks game that not only was I not going to watch the Superbowl, I’m giving up on the NFL. I may change my mind, but the refereeing in that game made, to my mind, only one conclusion possible: the system is corrupt.
My logic is simple. When you have BLATANTLY bad calls made, one after the other, when the referees are clearly not incompetent, clearly seasoned, clearly not blind, clearly capable of calling a game cleanly, and when there is no high level public censure for consistently favoring one team over another, then the SYSTEM–not those refs, but the SYSTEM, is corrupt.
I read the NFL is around a $10 BILLION business. Do you think there are not at times pressures placed on refs and even coaches and players to reach one outcome and not another?
Clearly, Kaepernick and his team played their hearts out, but somewhere in the 3rd Quarter, apparently before yet ANOTHER bad call, I gave up on the game. I left the bar I was watching it in.
I counted 2 Personal Foul penalties that were patent bullshit, a personal foul on a 49’s punt returner that was NOT called, in which he was clothes lined, and then facemasked ON THE GROUND, causing his helmet to come off, a reception and fumble caused by the ground (“the ground cannot cause a fumble”) that was called an incomplete pass, two BLATANT intentional grounding calls that were not made (Here is the rule), and one roughing the kicker penalty not called, that was so blatant HE TWISTED HIS DAMN ANKLE. Here is the verbiage on that.
And as I mentioned, there were apparently bad calls after that, all or substantially all favoring the Seahawks.
Again, I want to be clear: bad refereeing happens, but it does NOT happen in high level NFL games called by seasoned professionals. The ONLY conclusion possible, to my mind, is that the game was intentionally skewed to the Seahawks, which vaguely nauseates me, makes me feel yet more doubt about the future of our nation, and certainly causes me to doubt the integrity of the NFL as a whole. I’ve never seen anything like it, other than a couple blatantly bad calls against Green Bay in the Super Bowl where they played the Steelers.
The whole things reminds me this is a for-profit business, one that I henceforth will NOT support in any way.