“BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER,
AND SO WILL PIGS AND SWINE;
RATS AND MICE WILL HAVE THEIR CHOICE,
AND SO WILL I HAVE MINE.”
My choice is that the National Football League do away with their stupid overtime rules! If rats and mice will have their choice, shouldn’t we have ours? The little rhyme above is straight out of my THE REAL MOTHER GOOSE book. It might be make believe but, gee, so are some of the NFL’s rules!
The NFL has drug their feet for years on these overtime rules. Slowly, hesitantly, they make small changes. They are still so antiquated that the team that wins the coin toss usually wins the game. The NFL needs to adopt some form of the rules that the college teams play with. BOTH teams get a chance to score. It makes so much sense that even the Pigs and Swine would have it be their choice! Give it up guys! Don’t be so ashamed to admit that you don’t want to do it because the college folks thought it up first.
It is more than obvious that the Patriots and Chiefs are evenly matched. Two hair-raising, close games this year proved that. Doesn’t it make sense to let the two teams settle their struggle by giving BOTH teams exactly the same chance to win?
As long as I am unhappy with the NFL, let’s continue on our rant about the officiating and the silliness that has become the annoyingly-long thing called “that play is under review”. It is a given that these “play reviews” have disrupted the flow of the NFL games. So, if we are going to accept that then I do not understand why they DO NOT review penalty calls, or better than that, review penalties that ARE NOT called.
The folks in New Orleans are up in arms about an enormously obvious penalty that was not called that probably would have allowed the Saints to win the game. My goodness, if you are going to disrupt the game every few minutes, even seconds, with penalties and play reviews, then doesn’t it make sense to allow a coach to challenge a penalty call or better yet, a non-penalty call? “WE WUZ ROBBED!” screamed the headlines Monday morning in New Orleans and rightfully so. Why, when it would be so easy to fix these things, does the NFL drag their feet?
Chiefs’ coach Andy Reid has pointed out another possible faux pas by the officials in their game with the Patriots in that the rules state that the officials are supposed to warn a player that is lined up offside before tossing a flag. That did not happen and it probably cost the Chiefs the right to be playing in the Super Bowl.
Let’s hope the Big Cigars of the NFL are meeting this week and next and working on some of these glaring inadequacies in their rules and procedures. They are easy to fix if they just swallow their pride and do it and do not offer to us, “Hey, it’s part of the game.” Otherwise, maybe the Chiefs and the Saints should play this next weekend. We could call it the OOPS BOWL!
Buddy Tabler is a guest columnist for the Great Bend Tribune and his views don’t necessarily reflect those of the paper. He can be reached at budtabler@gmail.com.
