SmashMouth

Just in case you missed it, the National Football League in its infinite wisdom appeared to disrespect the New Orleans Saints once again yesterday (perhaps unintentionally but one has to wonder). The League’s Competition Committee decided not to make any changes to its rules regarding instant replay and more specifically, any non-calls made by NFL referees, at least for now.

As noted by several reporters on-hand in Indianapolis during yesterday’s meeting, the League and the Committee — which ironically Saints head coach Sean Payton himself is actually a member of — will explore the possibility of revisiting the rule and consider making any changes of significance at a later date.

There was no word on whether or not Payton addressed the Committee, or whether or not it was ever brought up for serious conversation among his fellow seven members (Chairman and Falcons President Rich McKay, Giants owner John Mara, Cowboys co-owner Stephen Jones, Packers president Mark Murphy, former Ravens GM Ozzie Newsome, Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, and Broncos GM John Elway).

Not surprisingly, it was the very same rule that the League and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had promised to consider changing after the Black and Gold got robbed of a Super Bowl appearance in the NFC Championship Game loss to the Los Angeles Rams last month. The decision followed the much-discussed and now-infamous pass interference and helmet-to-helmet hit “no-calls” that should have been called penalties, by Rams DB Nickell Robey-Coleman against Saints WR Tommylee Lewis.



Instead of taking up the issue of the controversial play and its after-effects that essentially ripped the hearts out of an entire fan-base, members of the Committee opted instead to take into consideration things such as banning players from leaving their team’s bench on the sidelines to go and celebrate with their teammate(s) after scoring a touchdown.

Oh boy, that’s a real critical issue that they chose to address right there. Are they serious?

When you have as bad of an image problem as the NFL does at the moment, it would seem that perhaps the League would have been better served to address the most significant controversy that hangs over the sport like a dark black cloud. Namely, that officiating debacle at the Superdome a few weeks back that essentially robbed an entire team and its fanbase of a legitimate shot at winning a World Championship.

Hysterically, the person that runs the Saints team Twitter account was quick to throw some “shade” at the League for their blatant hypocrisy and apparent incompetence, with this brilliant Tweet right after word had spread about the Competition Committee’s ignoring the replay issue for now and addressing other issues of far less importance.

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