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From: mom@sfmag.UUCP (M.Modig)
Newsgroups: net.sport.football
Subject: Re: Atrocious officiating on Monday Night
Message-ID: <779@sfmag.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Nov-85 12:56:45 EST
Article-I.D.: sfmag.779
Posted: Sat Nov 16 12:56:45 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Nov-85 05:47:14 EST
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> I have been an avid fan of NFL football for many years, and have seen more games
> than most.  However, the officiating on Monday's Denver/ S.F. game was a 
> complete and utter travesty.
> 
> There will always be the occasional bad call, but the inconsistent rulings of
> the officials in that game were positively vile.  I will forgive the 
> questionable (to put it kindly) pass interference call on a crucial third down
> play in the Broncos' last scoring drive, but the missed call of interference 
> against Denver in the End Zone disgusted me.

You hit it right on the head. Inconsistency.  There were many questionable
situations involving pass interference (possibly) that were let go
(remeber that play the 49ers made on Broncos TE Mike Barber deep in
SF territory-- I'd call that interference, along with at least some
of the other situations that have been mentioned). As I understand
it, the DB has more freedom, but he still has to play the ball and
not the man.  To me, it's ridiculous that all these other situations
were let go, while a key one late in the game was called, especially
since Watson was really making no effort to try to catch the ball at
all-- it looked almost like it was a set up play.  These calls are
all judgement calls, I realise.  But I do like to have a little
consistency-- if it's called a certain way, it should be called that
way every time.

> Without its fine, classy fan that threw the snowball at Matt Cavanaugh in the
> second quarter, the Broncos would be 6-4 at this point.  It's beyond me that 
> the officials did not call an unsportsmanlike against the crowd at that point.
> According the rules, that is within their power.

I hardly think that the snowball made a decisive difference in the
game.  I think, though, that even most Denver fans would agree that
it wouldn't be unreasonable to run the play over again (hopefully
without the snowball).  Saying that this was THE key play of the
game, though, was a bit much, despite the emotional effects of such
a play, and what might have happened on a replay of the down.  I also
am not sure that the officials can call an unsportsmanlike conduct
against the crowd, though they can inisist the down be played over.

In any case, things generally have a tendency to even out, and one
game does not a season make. If the Niners hadn't lost a couple of
easy ones early, this game wouldn't have been so crucial.

Mark Modig
ihnp4!sfmag!mom