I don’t complain about officiating in the National Football League.
It is a useless activity and akin to complaining about an eight-year-old dropping a fly ball in a Little League game. One doesn’t belittle a little kid from making an error in baseball because the little guy is just learning the game, doing the best he can, and encouragement is a lot better than ridicule.
Problem is, we shouldn’t be comparing the officiating in the NFL with a little league player, but they have more in common than they should. Little league players are not professionals, after their games they do what kids do; go to school, play with their friends, do household chores and homework.
After officiating a game, the guys making the calls in the NFL go back to what they do as school administrators, policemen, lawyers or whatever their day jobs are. Officiating an NFL game is just a weekend gig.
I don’t find complaining about officiating useful for my business, but it does affect it. If ever I wanted to protest the officials it would have been in 2006 when the calls in Super Bowl XL affected the outcome as much as a bad parent umpiring a little league game while attempting to help his son win the contest. I was watching a head official in that game make one call and judgment after another that tipped the scale in that contest to the Steelers side, cringing with the knowledge that the head ref in that contest was a gambler and one time Qoxhi Picks client.
Fans of the New Orleans Saints have a right to cry foul when the Los Angeles Rams advanced to the Super Bowl three years ago based on a flagrant pass interference that was not called. The missed penalty call was so obvious that the league changed their rules the following season to try and correct the problem of blown calls on pass interference. But, when the league saw how many errors were made on that judgment call they decided to not change any of the mistakes and instead started costing teams that challenged blown pass interference calls with a challenge and time out by not acknowledging the original error.