What is the Process Detroit?

Being a professional sports official has to be one of the toughest jobs in all of sports, with 60-70,000 fans second-guessing every call in the stadium and millions of armchair quarterbacks watching at home.

Officials are human and they make mistakes, and if you play for a team from Detroit, it happens more often than is acceptable.

Detroit Tiger’s pitcher Armando Galarraga was robbed of a perfect game and no-hitter in June when first base umpire Jim Joyce made a mistake. Sunday the Detroit Lions and Calvin Johnson were robbed of a game-winning touchdown catch.

With 31 seconds remaining in the game, the Lions trailing 19-14, the would be go-ahead touchdown pass from Shaun Hill was waved off after referee Gene Steratore reviewed the play.

Johnson made the highlight reel catch, out-leaping Chicago’s Zack Bowman, landing with both feet clearly on the ground. In fact, he went to a knee and then rolled over, only releasing the ball to celebrate the victory with his teammate. However, the catch was erroneously ruled incomplete because of an obscure rule.

After the game Steratore said, “The ruling is that in order for the catch to be completed he (the receiver) has got to maintain possession of the ball throughout the entire process of the catch.”

Excuse me Mr. Streatore, but the NFL rules also state, “the ground can’t cause a fumble.”

Johnson clearly had possession of the ball in his right hand until it touched the ground and well after he was down because his knee touched the ground, after contact by a defensive player.

One only needs to imagine that Johnson was a running back. He bullied his way past a defender, took two steps in the end zone, went to one knee and rolled over only to leave the ball on the turf and proceed to celebrate, to understand how messed up the ruling, and maybe the rule cited be Steratore referred to is.

Also, I don’t know how many times a running back, quarterback and even wide receivers have stretched the ball across the goal line and then lost control microseconds later, resulting in touchdowns.

Johnson clearly had control and the officials cost the Detroit fans again.

At least Joyce had the courage to admit he was wrong after reviewing the play, Steratore referred to a silly subjective rule in stealing away the game.

Sadly, like the Galarraga incident, an apology from the official won’t change the outcome of the game.

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