As has been said already, the NFL is a business and in the end it all comes down to profits. I believe it was in the 70's when the NFL came up with the salary cap so that more teams would have a chance to make the playoffs. They then expanded the playoffs. Before the salary cap, you would have the same few teams making the playoffs. Now more teams can make the playoffs so that you don't have as many bad teams with low ratings and attendance. You now have teams that have a lot of good players that they have to let go because of the salary cap. It wouldn't surprise me if the NFL favored certain teams for the sake of ratings. What business doesn't look for ways to increase their profits? I just got tired of watching refs decide who wins or loses. They can call a TD back with a holding penalty and then they overlook even worse holding infractions. It happens too many times, and unfortunately the Jets have gotten so many BS calls. I can't remember the last time the Patriots got a BS call. If there is no bias, how can that be? That's why I got tired of the whole thing and now say screw them. I watch the jets games but that's it. I don't care much about the playoffs or superbowl if the Jets are not playing.
Not to rip you because I think there certainly are biases by officials in all sports. It's the same things when guys get bigger strike zones than the opposing pitcher but in the NFL there are alot of people that need to be in on it to fix a game where in the NBA 3 refs and as evidenced by Game 3 of the Spurs/Suns 1 official can make a huge difference. These guys in the NFL conference after every call and sometimes other officials convince the other guy they were wrong. There are plenty of terrible calls that get made or missed but it's still better than the NBA and larger K zones. If you wanna see the worst officiating watch a college basketball game with UCLA, Kentucky ,Duke or North Carolina involved and 9 times out of 10 you will see some terrible one sided officiating.
I know it does seem like many calls go against the team that wouldn't have higher ratings, etc, or calls go against a team when they play the Pats, the Colts, the Boys, the Steelers, etc. In my opinion, this falls more under the category of biased officials and less under the category of conspiracy headed up by the NFL. As LTS said previously in this thread, the officiating in the Giant-Packer game sucked on both sides of the ball for both teams. That one missed PI call against the Packers, looked like the refs were favoring Favre's boys. Some of the holding calls against the Packers and the late hit were a little bit questionable as well. There was also a total blown Offside call against the Packers, so it's hard to point in either direction as officiating bias goes. The officiating sucked in that game as it has all year. Often yesterday, I turned to my roomate and said, "Man, can they just let them play?" There were other times where I said, "They blew that call!" The officiating has sucked with the no calls and calls.
Outside of the blatant trip / leg whip by vrabel that was missed on Rivers first INT, I thought it was good.
http://www.nfl.com/rulebook/penaltysummaries 10 yard penalty.... Looking through this list, what's interesting to me is this: I wish they'd flag punters/kickers for flopping more often.... I hate nothing more than when a home-team punter is brushed by a defensive player, and flops, drawing boos from the crowd when no flag is thrown.... Also thought it was interesting that it is a 10 yard penalty to 'Deliberately Bat or Punch a Loose Ball' as players intentionally bat the ball out of bounds on fumbles, or out of the back of the end zone for a safety very, very often in the NFL... These are usually considered "heads up" plays, when really they are illegal...
Yeah, it says tripping but it doesn't clarify if that applies to tackles or not. Every tackle that takes the legs out first is essentially a trip, so that wouldn't make sense.
I guess people forget that the Giants got two very huge calls early in the third quarter - one overturning a Packer interception when it looked to me like Burress made contact and not the DB and the other a roughing the passer penalty. Both were on third down. If the pick stands, its 10-6 Pack with GB with the ball in Giant territory. I don't see how the officiating helped the Pack last night.
^^ Neither do I, and they didn't even review the Burress dropped catch near the endzone where the ground knocked out the ball.
There's more of an incentive for the NFL to support a Packers-Patriots game rather than a Giants-Patriots one. How many times have we seen underdog teams make it to the Big One, which produced boring SB games or ones that we don't really care about.
The only problem with those two calls is that they were called right. Manning got hit after he had released the ball and the defender was coming in at an angle and could have easily avoided him. The other call was right too. They are not going to blow every call or else it would be clear to everybody who they are favoring. Wasn't there a TD by the Giants that was called back because of non-blating hold away from the ball carrier which was pointed out by the announcers? How many times have we seen a blatant hold not called? Having a TD called back, now that's a HUGE call.
