Officiating problems have always been there

On Jan. 3, a questionable pass interference call against Miami during overtime in the Fiesta Bowl helped Ohio State win college football's national championship.

Two days later, the NFL found itself in the middle of its own uproar over an official's call at the end of the Giants-49ers playoff game.

Rarely has so much been made about one play than the missed call that ended the Giants-49ers playoff game last Sunday. That's in large part because the NFL, without being asked, acknowledged its officials had erred -- a rare occurrence -- and because commissioner Paul Tagliabue spoke out about it in the days that followed.

Those least offended by the mistake seem to be the Giants.

GM Ernie Accorsi, coach Jim Fassel and QB Kerry Collins all noted that the officials didn't blow a 24-point third-quarter lead. And those who have watched New York's kicking woes all year assume that even if they had gotten another chance to kick a game-winning field goal, something would have gone wrong.

The public acknowledgment that officials erred isn't the first time that's happened.

In 1991, Jimmy Johnson's Dallas Cowboys lost to the Giants in the Meadowlands in a game that was filled with officiating errors. "I know I'm going to get fined," Johnson said as he complained after the game, noting that league rules prohibit coaches from speaking out about calls.

The next day, the league made a point of noting that it wasn't fining Johnson. And Joe Browne, Tagliabue's chief spokesman, said: "We had a lot of highlights in the league this week, but the officiating wasn't one of them."

The next time Browne walked into an officials' dressing room, he got a chilly reception. The league hasn't said much since about bad calls.

In fact, they occur every week.

Coaches -- usually losing ones -- routinely send in complaints to the officiating department and are told privately when the tapes show that the call was bad.

Occasionally, that leaks out, as it did this season after Minnesota's loss in Green Bay, when the NFL acknowledged to Vikings' coach Mike Tice that a game-turning pass interference call against his team shouldn't have been made. But that acknowledgment came from the team; it was not announced by the league.

Because last Sunday's mistake was in a playoff game -- one that got a huge TV rating -- the league felt compelled to acknowledge it, ordering all officials to huddle on late calls and changing the positioning on field-goal attempts to give them a better few of aborted plays or fakes.

Can anything really be changed by huddles or repositioning?

Probably not -- we're talking about human error here. And for the most part, replays demonstrate that even disputed calls are correct most of the time. During the regular season, there were 294 replay challenges, and only 94 calls were overturned.

Nor is there much chance -- if any -- that replay will be extended to cover situations such as the one in Sunday's game.

In all replay debates, one thing that's been agreed upon is to exclude penalties because the calls are too subjective. Imagine, for example, replaying holding calls.

So this week's storm is likely to blow over more quickly than last year's "tuck rule" decision in the Oakland-New England game. If the Giants are less than steamed over what happened last Sunday, the Raiders are still seething about what ensued after the ball came out of Tom Brady's grasp on that snowy night in Foxboro, Mass.

These days, in case they ever forget, fans are remembering a key to the game of football.

Bad calls are a big part of it.