Football Whitlock has a great idea

orange · 10-08-2009, 11:54 AM

9. Fixing the roughing-Tom Brady-penalty crisis is rather easy.

As I did when I first addressed this problem at the beginning of the season, I'm not going to play the race card. I'm going to continue to ignore the fact that Donovan McNabb had a rib cracked while laying in the end zone and there was no penalty called, and I'm going to ignore the unpenalized illegal hits leveled against Off-The-Marcus Russell and David Garrard last week.

This is not an issue driven by race. It's a star power issue, no different from the NBA officiating that protected Michael Jordan the second half of his career and gave Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat an NBA title.

Refs pamper the big stars. Refs are humans just like you and me. They get caught up in Brady's fame.

Ray "Avon Barksdale" Lewis and Ed "Stringer Bell" Reed had every right to blast the refs following the Patriots-Ravens game. There were two unwarranted roughing-the-Brady penalties that contributed to New England TD drives. One of the penalties occurred on third and nine and Brady threw incomplete. And the other occurred on second and 11 and Brady completed a 1-yard pass.

The "hits" didn't justify a flag and they certainly didn't justify 15-yard penalties. Why do quarterbacks deserve more protection than a punter or a kicker? Why can't there be a 5-yard running-into-the-Brady call and a 15-yard roughing-the-Brady call?

A hand accidently slapping a QB in the helmet isn't worthy of 15 yards. A defender falling down and grazing a QB's knee isn't worth 15 yards.

And there needs to be a common-sense official placed in a television replay booth. He needs the authority to stop the game and review any and every 15-yard penalty. Look at the excessive-celebration penalty that ruined the Georgia-LSU college game. A common-sense ref in the booth could've stopped that.

If you eliminated the TV timeouts after punts, kickoffs and timeouts primarily taken to stop the clock, a more active replay ref wouldn't interfere with the flow of an NFL game or prevent it from concluding in three hours or less.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/1...are-NFL-Truths

10-08-2009, 11:54 AM	Topic Starter
orange MVP Join Date: Sep 2000 Location: Denver, CO Casino cash: $10004900	Whitlock has a great idea 9. Fixing the roughing-Tom Brady-penalty crisis is rather easy. As I did when I first addressed this problem at the beginning of the season, I'm not going to play the race card. I'm going to continue to ignore the fact that Donovan McNabb had a rib cracked while laying in the end zone and there was no penalty called, and I'm going to ignore the unpenalized illegal hits leveled against Off-The-Marcus Russell and David Garrard last week. This is not an issue driven by race. It's a star power issue, no different from the NBA officiating that protected Michael Jordan the second half of his career and gave Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat an NBA title. Refs pamper the big stars. Refs are humans just like you and me. They get caught up in Brady's fame. Ray "Avon Barksdale" Lewis and Ed "Stringer Bell" Reed had every right to blast the refs following the Patriots-Ravens game. There were two unwarranted roughing-the-Brady penalties that contributed to New England TD drives. One of the penalties occurred on third and nine and Brady threw incomplete. And the other occurred on second and 11 and Brady completed a 1-yard pass. The "hits" didn't justify a flag and they certainly didn't justify 15-yard penalties. Why do quarterbacks deserve more protection than a punter or a kicker? Why can't there be a 5-yard running-into-the-Brady call and a 15-yard roughing-the-Brady call? A hand accidently slapping a QB in the helmet isn't worthy of 15 yards. A defender falling down and grazing a QB's knee isn't worth 15 yards. And there needs to be a common-sense official placed in a television replay booth. He needs the authority to stop the game and review any and every 15-yard penalty. Look at the excessive-celebration penalty that ruined the Georgia-LSU college game. A common-sense ref in the booth could've stopped that. If you eliminated the TV timeouts after punts, kickoffs and timeouts primarily taken to stop the clock, a more active replay ref wouldn't interfere with the flow of an NFL game or prevent it from concluding in three hours or less. http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/1...are-NFL-Truths
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