Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

I was watching the Liberty Bowl the other night, and the game came down to the last play. Kansas needed a TD to tie Arkansas and had the ball on the 5 yard line with time for only one more play. The Kansas QB dropped back to pass, scrambled for the endzone, and was creamed by 3 Arkansas defenders short of the goal-line. Game over...but wait! The officials want to review the play for targeting. After an interlude, the officials declare that targeting took place, so Kansas gets the ball at the 1 and can run another play. When I say "I don't even know what I am watching anymore", it's not an expression, it's literal. You watch a football play take place, then after the play the officials tell you what you actually saw. It's crazy. You see an incomplete pass? Nope, that was pass interference. You see a QB get tackled while running? Nope, that was unnecessary roughness. My favorite was when Clay Matthews would get penalized for sacking the QB.

In my lifetime, I've never seen such a smaller difference between the pro and college games. College offenses can work in the NFL now because you can't touch the QB and their are too many teams in the NFL and not enough quality DBs. And the college game is a mess. 15 years ago in college you had variety of offenses...Flexbone, Wishbone, Pistol, Air Raid, Run-and-Shoot, etc. Now, because of wonky rules and wonky rules enforcements, every team just runs the same RPO offense. You can have linemen downfield, you can have WRs blocking DBs on pass plays, if you hit the QB on a running play its targeting. Its very slapdash to me, and I see the same thing in the NFL. Everyone runs the same type of offense, and the game itself is completely sterile. Very few of the players in the NFL have distinguishing characteristics.

Thanks to the Tuck Rule, I no longer know what a fumble is. Thanks to the "process," I no longer know what a reception is. We've been conditioned to not believe our own eyes, and to presume that the result of the play that just took place won't count. The rule book has become overstuffed, and the game has been put in the hands of officials who are forced to make calls that might be technically correct but are based on nonsensical premises.

Citizen wrote:...We've been conditioned to not believe our own eyes...

And, one might say, not just in football...

I've always said that if the rules are too complicated to play the game they need to be revised.
I've played, coached and even refereed (for one season) football for over twenty years and I am constantly befuddled by what I see on an NFL gridiron.

I am also a (board) game player.
If a game came out with rules as convoluted, complex and counter-intuitive as the modern NFL Rulebook it would never see the table top. No matter how good the game itself was... it'd be considered unplayable.

College basketball is a sport I used to love but have pretty much stopped watching. It's so frustrating and aggravating because the game is so poorly officiated. I've been watching for all those years and still don't know what a foul is.

I used to love NBA basketball from the 80s and 90s but once I realized that Michael Jordan was never going to be called with more than three fouls, much less foul out of a game, I knew that certain superstars had priority over everyone else ... Kind a like QBs in the NFL now ...