About the author

czabe

Steve Czaban is a 25 year sports radio veteran, who hosts an afternoon drive show in Washington D.C. "Czabe" also writes and edits his own commentaries for www.czabe.com and other on-line and print publications. He can be reached at czabe@yahoo.com.

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6 Comments

  1. 1

    Ringo

    late hit on murray and hands to the face not called on dez pass play drive. defensive guy going low on romo on his td pass..not called. Bad calls/ non calls happen both ways. I think if it was originally not flagged we would not be having this conversation, which i guess is the point..the reversal was bad, but i don’t think there is a single person from a dark room making the calls…that is absurd….Also, there was an offensive facemask by pettigre on that play.

    Reply
  2. 2

    Darrin Hamlin

    As soon as I saw the fat guy hug fest in Jerry’s box I knew it would be on Czabe’s site. First thing I thought of… 🙂

    Reply
  3. 3

    Aaron B.

    Good call, Steve. It’s not that this proves there’s straightforward cheating going on; it’s that we don’t know what’s going on, and this makes it look like unknown people have a lot more opportunity to influence games than we thought. I personally like replay, but we were told that replay was limited to certain plays and used according to specific guidelines. If the replay equipment that connects the refs to some guys behind the curtain is being used to guide the refs whenever they like during the game, that’s very bad.

    I’ve wondered before at how many late flags there are, especially for defensive holding. The flag on that usually should come out early in the play, when the receiver is held within a few yards from the line of scrimmage, yet it often comes flying out after the end of the play a few seconds later. Now I’m wondering if that’s because a little birdie in the ref’s ear said, “Hey, you missed a big hold over there.” The refs can only see so much; a biased guy in a booth somewhere giving them pointers could sway a handful of calls per game without anyone knowing the difference. It wouldn’t even show in replays, because the calls could all be correct, just noticed more for one side than the other.

    By the way, I catch your show by downloading the podcasts. Right after your good rant today about tightening up your digital diet to avoid all the garbage out there, there was a podcast promo for the Pauly Shore show. I kid you not.

    Reply
  4. 4

    HozelRockit

    A retired NFL ref was asked about why they don’t keep crews intact and he tactfully said its because there could be some really good crews with a couple very weak links and experienced, top performing refs should be able to mesh together quickly. It is a good bet that if they used the best crews and they royally screwed up a playoff game (which would inevitably happen), there would be a lot of questions on why they don’t just bring together the best and the brightest to work the playoffs.

    Reply
  5. 5

    Emjeff

    I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Remember the 49ers-Ravens SuperBowl and the mysterious power outage? Someone wanted the 49ers to win…

    Reply
  6. 6

    Jim Parks

    The thing I find absolutely hilarious is that Czabe, along with a whole bunch of other fans, made a big deal out of the replacement refs being bad. This non-PI call and the holding call (which for some reason the NFL felt they needed to explain rather than the more obvious PI) as well as a handful of other calls in this game show what a joke the “professionals” are. Only this mistake was worse than the Fail Mary. Yes, the Fail Mary had the potential to keep the Packers out of the playoffs with the loss, but this cost the Lions a PLAYOFF GAME. I’m sorry, but these “pros” aren’t worth the money they’re getting, which was the original reason for the lockout.

    This was absolutely the most shameful and disgraceful display of so-called professionalism ever seen by mankind, whether or not there was a conspiracy behind it.

    Reply

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