Just before halftime during Monday night’s Packers-Giants game, a question emerged regarding whether a kickoff did or didn’t strike the leg of Giants tight end Lawrence Cager before going out of bounds.
It was clear and obvious that the ball hit Cager’s leg before going out of bounds. It was not clear and obvious to the officials, who threw a penalty flag indicating that the kickoff had gone out of bounds without being touched by a member of the receiving team.
Troy Aikman was not pleased by the amount of time required to sort things out.
“The problem with all this is just make a call, you know?” Aikman said, via Jimmy Traina (a real person) of SI.com. “I mean, there’s 13 seconds in the half. They’re not gonna — you know, just make a decision. And this is what stops all these games and the officials — I know, they’ve been talked about every week. But this is ridiculous what we’re watching right now. I mean, we see something, it takes five seconds. It takes them five minutes.”
It ultimately took (according to the stopwatch on my cell phone device) 100 hundred seconds between the blowing of the whistle and the commencement of the official explanation. As inexplicable delays go, it wasn’t particularly egregious. But it happened in those last few moments of garbage time before a time during which viewers (and broadcasters) hope to turn their attention to empty stomachs and/or full bladders.
Even if Aikman’s rant was perhaps a little premature in that specific moment, it’s significant that Aikman would say what he said during an NFL broadcast.
The NFL has become increasingly sensitive to the on-air criticism of officiating. Several weeks ago, someone at 345 Park Avenue wedged senior V.P. of officiating Walt Anderson into the ESPN broadcast to defend a non-eventful non-call of intentional grounding during the first drive of a Raiders-Lions Monday night game. It takes guts for someone like Aikman to be willing to light a fuse that will likely result in someone from Big Shield complaining to someone from Big Bristol.
It’s one thing for someone like me to do it here or on PFT Live, despite the various ties and tentacles to NBC. It’s quite another to do it during the presentation of an actual NFL game.
To his credit, Aikman doesn’t care. He’s going to tell the truth. Even though the NFL at times hopes to control the message, Aikman knows that his primary duty is to the audience.
And, surely, many who (like Aikman) were waiting for the second-quarter clock to get to 0:00 also were thinking what Aikman ultimately said. Because it is ridiculous that it takes that long for the current officiating structure to see what the rest of us can see.
That’s why I’m such a strong advocate for tearing down the officiating function and re-building it. The NFL needs to find a way to close the gap between what we see at home and what the officials see on the field.
We all saw last night — quickly — that the ball hit Cager’s leg. Those are things the officiating function need to spot far sooner than everyone else with a flatscreen and a couch does.
