Sports Announcer Rant

I was out of town all day yesterday, so I got to watch about 3 minutes of the Pittsburgh-Baltimore game while in the mall. I saw enough to see that the Seahawks lost to the Falcons.

Great.

Mrs. Ref said, "At least it was close."

This morning after my little exercise routine (trying to keep my girlish figure at 40-something, you know ....), I flipped on ESPN and happened to catch the review of yesterday's Seahawks game.

Normally those guys -- Boomer, Tom Jackson and the rest -- do a decent job. But here they showed some typical announcer behavior.

'Hawks down by 3 and attempting an onsides kick. 'Hawks recover. Kick successful. EXCEPT the player on the far side took a step over his restraining line before the ball was kicked. You can't do that. The covering official flagged him for it. 'Hawks had to re-kick. Falcons recover. Game over.

Boomer: "It was really close. You gotta wonder why the official is making that call at that point in the game."

Tom: "Yeah ... I'm sure Coach Holmgren is wondering the exact same thing."

Um . . . Because it was the RIGHT call!

A) Had he not made it, Atlanta would be wondering why he let it go.

B) It's an onsides kick attempt. The kicking team has a distinct advantage if they are allowed to cross that line early. Everyone knows this. Every player is taught from Day 1 of junior high football (or earlier) that you don't cross that line. And at the end of the game, with the game on the line, you don't make that mistake.

C) Sure, it was a close call. Sure you can argue that it was a nitpicky call. But nitpicky is calling an offensive lineman for offsides when he points to a defender, thereby breaking the plane of the neutral zone. Nitpicky is NOT calling a member of the kicking team offsides for breaking his restraining line and gaining an advantage at the end of the game.

D) Seattle was playing ATLANTA . . . It never should have come down to that play.

Yeah . . . I'm not generally fond of sports announcers.

Rant over.