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Post by timdaye on Oct 11, 2011 18:47:17 GMT -5
And, if I remember correctly. This game and these plays really lit a fire under re-instituting replay challenges.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 11, 2011 22:07:55 GMT -5
Terry was a SJ and Jerry Seeman was in charge of the official not Mike.
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Post by cj on Oct 12, 2011 0:00:34 GMT -5
You'e right...I was thinking of the tie line but just never remembered Jerry Seeman allowing any of his thoughts to seep out.....
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Post by zebrablog on Oct 12, 2011 13:23:37 GMT -5
So, after hearing that Jerry Seeman made comments about the officiating in that BUF-NE game in 1998, I started trawling the intertubes for the SI story that cj mentioned. sportsillustrated.cnn.com/features/1998/weekly/981214/nfl1214/The comments became public indirectly, as Peter King was allowed to do a fly-on-the-wall perspective of the Saturday evening meetings of the game crew. The crew was watching an evaluation tape from Seeman, which King dutifly reported. I have only heard Seeman speak in a dry, inflectionless tone, so I could only imagine how his evaluation must have sounded: There is no foul. It's incomprehensible as much as we prepare.... When we make such a blatant error in judgment, we deserve the criticism we get. ... The greatest attribute of the NFL official is common sense. Under no conditions should an official or officials ever be involved in a situation like this again. It is probably the most in-depth day-in-the-life article I have ever read on the NFL officials. I doubt this level of access would ever be granted again. As an added bonus, I found this article from the same month -- after the botched calls in New England and the Thanksgiving coin-toss travesty -- with commentary from the always colorful former referee Ben Dreith. I know he came off as a popular antiestablishment loose cannon, but Dreith could have had Mike Pereira's Fox Sports gig before there even was a Fox Sports. Imagine how that would have been. Bonus link: www.deseretnews.com/article/670511/Ex-ref-says-NFL-officiating-at-all-time-low.html
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Post by FredFan7 on Oct 12, 2011 14:26:05 GMT -5
Wanna be an NFL official? How'd you like to be sitting in that meeting while your boss calls your work "incomprehensible" "blatant error" and says that the call deserves public criticism.
Whew! Props to McAulay for rebounding and having an excellent career. Some NFL officials may have folded up after that and not survived.
Great find, zebrablog!
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Post by FredFan7 on Oct 12, 2011 14:54:11 GMT -5
Regarding the Dreith article:
My biggest issue with Seeman's tenure at the helm of NFL officials was that it appeared that he drove off or downright fired many veteran officials and hired officials that conformed to his robotic mechanics and procedures. Fred Wyant's book speaks frankly about this subject. I think Seeman's personnel actions came home to roost in the 1998 season (although, time later proved to exonerate Phil Luckett).
Seeman moved officiating technology forward by using video, and he oversaw the re-institution of NFL replay - which deserve kudos. He was also a great on field official, although his style used to personally drive me crazy.
The positive and negatives during his tenure make his Supervisor of Officials a wash for me.
Mike Pereira, while the start of his tenure was a little rocky as he put HIS stamp on the office, proved to be (in my opinon) the best professional sports officials' supervisor ever in any sport.
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Post by cj on Oct 12, 2011 16:01:04 GMT -5
Some memory I have for these things, eh...but I did get my time line wrong about who was head zebra...sorry about that.
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Post by zcr57 on Oct 12, 2011 16:05:56 GMT -5
If I remember right, 1998 was a VERY rough season for NFL officials. Here's a list of incidents I remember from that season:
-Bills-Pats phantom pass interference
-Lions-Steelers Thanksgiving coin toss
-Jets-Seahawks game when the Jets were awarded a touchdown when V. Testaverde was clearly stopped short of the goal line.
-Packers-49ers playoff game where a SF receiver (I think J. Rice) clearly fumbled but was ruled down by contact. This was on the final drive of the game and had the correct ruling been made, GB would have advanced.
Keep in mind that all of these situations cost a team a win, and in some cases, cost a team a playoff spot. Instant replay was re-implemented the following season.
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Post by FredFan7 on Oct 12, 2011 16:48:58 GMT -5
If I remember right, 1998 was a VERY rough season for NFL officials. You are correct. In fact, I remember before the playoffs that year, there was a rumor that Jerry Seeman was going to be fired. The rumor never got very far and I chalk that up to a columnist looking for some headlines or possibly a whispering campaign. But still......
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Post by cj on Oct 13, 2011 7:42:16 GMT -5
...but of those four plays, only one (Testaverde) as IR was brought back wold have been reviewable...the coin toss was not reviewable (and the ref got tht right anyway), pass interference is not reviewable (although the call on the side lines right before might have been but I don't know how clear the evidence was), and down by contact did not become reviewable until the Ed Hochulhi gaffe in Denver a couple of years ago. So really it was probably the Testaverde call that was the real inspiration behind re-introducing IR.
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