I Forgive You

This past week, the sports-news services like ESPN has been telling the story of a referee, Ed Hochuli, on how he blew a fumble call during the last few remaining minutes of the Broncos-Chargers game in Week 2 (Hochuli ruled it an incomplete pass and the whistle blew -- replays overturned Hochuli's call and ruled it a fumble, but did not give San Diego possession because of the blown whistle. Denver kept the ball on the San Diego 10-yard line. The Broncos would later score and win the game on a 2-point conversion, 39-38).

Obviously, San Diego's head coach Norv Turner was livid. Immediately after the game, Hochuli approached Turner and admitted that he had blown the call. San Diego, and its fans, have been bitching since.

Now the NFL has stepped in and has announced that Hochuli will receive "lower grades" for his performance and could hurt his chances for referee-ing future playoff games. On top of all that, he's been receiving hate-mail (no words on death threats, yet) but he's shown the dignity to reply to it all.

I see many, many problems with this. But first, I've been there before. Although I never had the opportunity to ref football games, I've reffed basketball games -- middle school and 9th grade. I didn't want to, because why would I officiate basketball -- a sport that I never played in high school? I did it anyways; it was a paid position.

With my lack of knowledge, I took my share of shit. Some was worse than others, but when I had a coach in my face about a call, I had it. Then, you had the fans in the stands getting in on the action, I was ready just to walk off the court. I just had to ignore it. It was from that point on that I had found a respect for these officials, from the high school-level all the way up to the professional ranks.

It's easy for fans alike to criticize the calls of a referee. If a call is against your team, you're going to piss and moan about it. But we, as a society, has got to realize that referees are not robots, but are people like ourselves -- prone to make mistakes.

Now in Hochuli's case, he's been a referee in the NFL for over a decade. He's been well-trained and it considered to be one of the best. He should have known better, but again -- he's human. He makes one mistake (especially since the game was on the line) and he's going to hear about it. I can only thank God that this wasn't the Super Bowl -- Hochuli would've been run out of the country.

I admire Hochuli's attempts to "save-face:" admitting that he had made a mistake, apologizing to the Chargers' coaching staff and its players, the city of San Diego, and NFL fans alike.

Why don't like is the constant barrage of verbal abuse towards him and even the NFL's attempt to down-grade him. If they make him a back-line judge...

It's only Week 2, folks. And I'm a Vikings fan.