This blog will not be mainly about the Baltimore Raven (I hope) but please bear with me. I have been hearing clowns on the sports talk stations whining all day about the officiating on Sunday. Please do not blame the loss of the game on the referees.
I am not saying that support these calls (the most controversial of the two calls being the phantom roughing the passer orchestrated by an awkwardly falling, off balance, in the general direction of the Golden Boy’s knee Terrell Suggs or the “That call was bullshit,” heard audibly over the speakers on my sweet Samsung 32in. unsportsmanlike handed out to coach Harbough), however these call did not cost the Ravens the football game.
(I was particularly intrigued by the call against John Harbough. I wonder if this incident is one of the first examples of a paradigm shift in the philosophy of today’s NFL referees towards a more “basketball-like” approach to dealing with coaches on the sideline. Penalties being awarded to coaches on the sideline, while rare in the NFL, are common place in the NBA and the NCAA. And believe it or not, this might be a good thing.
I love it when coaches get T’ed up in basketball. I am pretty good about seeing them coming too. Say I have been watching a basketball coach, say Bob Huggins (slays me when Bill Raftery or someone calls him Huggie Bear, by the way), ride a referee up and down the court all game long. His breath probably smells like Paul Mason and he is sweating through his suit. After a particularly poor call late in the third quarter, the referee is doing that gay backwards fast-walk thing they do down the sideline in the direction of the coach. The coach leans into the path of the ref at exactly the right moment, spews something particularly venomous or obscene (This moment is a million times more awesome if a random network mic is close enough to pick up the exchange and broadcast it into your home so you get to hear exactly what was said. It’s always something like, “You are so fucking bad.” Or “You’re a fucking faggot (“pussy” can also do the trick.) The same concept of awesomeness applies to college basketball games when you can hear the entire crowd chanting something like “Fuck You J.J.” or “You Have Herpes” coming through your TV during the heart of the conference season). Now I’m watching this unfold over on the sideline while the play is developing on the court. I see that the last comment has really affected the referee. He glares at the coach as he passes him, cocks back his arms and drops an explosive T-bomb, the tips of his fingers on his right hand nearly pierce the skin of his left palm. The coach is stunned and reacts one of two ways: He either realizes he has gone too far and contritely has a seat or he goes Robert Knight. Either way, the moment is great (especially if it happens to Mike Kryzlksjggsdfski).
Now, in the NFL, this shift towards and more basketball-like approach, in which the referees (and through which, the league) have a legitimate way of disciplining a coach in-game, would like require some rules tweaks. A fifteen yard penalty is obviously too harsh a price to pay for cursing at a referee. I propose a five yard penalty and a limit of two of such penalties per game. If you receive two technical fouls the coach is ejected. This would prove especially amusing if the head coach also has offensive or defensive play caller. You would get overwhelmed, running back coaches dialing up plays from deep within the recesses of playbook because this is the play that he came up with in practice that one time. It would be rule.)
Mark Clayton cost the Ravens this victory. I love this new look Ravens offense, but when I saw Derrick Mason get up slowly after making that ridiculous touchdown grab and had a mini-panic attack I realized once and for all how limited this receiving core really is. I have watched too many boring, run the ball on first and second down every series, Ravens teams not be excited about this pass-happy offense but they really need another receiving option who isn’t going to let a ball bounce of his chest on fourth down with the game in the balance.
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