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This is an interesting debate.
I've never met a human who didn't exhibit some form of bias. (Actually, I don't think I've ever even met a housecat that wasn't biased.) Combine that reality with the fact that so many penalties in a football game are "judgement" calls and you have all the necessary ingredients for disparity.
Of course, that's the "human element" associated with officiating and I'm okay with that. But you have to ask yourself why officiate the games at all? What's the purpose of having rule "enforcers" on the field?
What I have a problem with is a layer of incompetence superimposed upon potential bias. When that exists, concerns are perfectly understandable. Last night, this officiating crew was obviously either sleep-deprived or incompetent. (Considering the blatant errors that had to be reversed, there's really no other way to describe what occurred.) If an observer can be truly objective, one has to recognize that incompetence combined with bias can well lead to unfair and unequal application of the "rules". This leads to doubt ... which is a logical and rational reaction to the kind of exhibition we saw from that officiating crew.
Trying to draw conclusions from a specific play or call is avoiding the basic problem. If the refs can't call a game honestly and impartially ... and most importantly ... consistently ... throughout the game ... game to game .... league-wide ... skepticism is an appropriate response.
We'd all like to believe that the typical officiating mistakes we always see are simply the result of normal, run-of-the-mill "human error". On the other hand, we could also be wrong about that.
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