The NFL left little mystery as to what it considers the ultimate in entertainment for the 2021 season when the referee was revealed for Thursday night's opener between Tampa Bay and Dallas.
Predictably, NFL opened season with too much attention on officiating
From referee Shawn Hochuli as a center of attention to controversy over taunting, there were too many unnecessary distractions.
September 11, 2021 at 9:56PM
You might have settled in for an evening of football with the anticipation that a quarterback, either Tampa's Tom Brady or Dallas' Dak Prescott, would be the most important person on the field.
I lost all hope of that at the coin toss, when the referee was revealed to be Shawn Hochuli. He became a referee in 2018, the season after his father, Ed, retired.
Apparently, the league office felt the NFL wouldn't have the same appeal without a Hochuli walking onto the field every week, surveying the stands and saying to himself: "Look at all the people who came to see me.''
Judd Zulgad, of radio, podcasts and sportswriting, said of the new Hochuli: "The equivalent of him would be Joe West having a kid that's a big-league umpire.''
There are two options for NFL officiating crews: A) When in doubt, don't throw a flag; or B) when in doubt, throw a flag.
When you get a referee from the B) side, as is Hochuli, you get a mess such as occurred on Thursday, with 24 penalties called and 19 assessed.
Hochuli basically apologized for not adding to the total when he announced during the second half that a timeout had occurred before a "fouling action" could take place.
What amazed the most was that after all this exuberance in throwing flags, Team Hochuli allowed Tampa receiver Chris Godwin to extend his arm by two-thirds and push Dallas cornerback Jourdan Lewis to the Bermuda grass. This allowed Godwin to catch a 24-yard pass that set up a game-winning field goal from 36 yards.
If it had been a game when the officials let 'em play all night, I could understand it. When it's a game where you've called 24 penalties, you can't cower at an obvious 25th so that can be framed as another grand moment for Brady, the ancient hero.
That heroism is fully secured. Brady doesn't need gifts, so that Cris Collinsworth, the king of fawning, can add on more.
Hochuli and his umpire Terry Killens did perform a service in the first half by proving the fraudulence of the crackdown on "taunting" ordered by the NFL's powerful competition committee.
The NFL thrives on paranoia of its workforce, whether that be officiating crews trying to maintain favored status with supervisor Al Riveron, or a noble veteran such as the Vikings' Stephen Weatherly being coerced into taking a $500,000 pay cut on a whim of General Manager Rick Spielman.
Once the taunting emphasis became public, I immediately imagined an officials crew leaving the locker room with this instruction for the ref:
"Let's be sure to call a taunting penalty at the first chance."
Killens and Hochuli all but admitted that was the case during three seconds that the ref's mic was on.
The taunting was called on Tampa center Ryan Jensen, for celebrating after Dallas defensive end Carlos Watkins received a flag for taking an extra shot at him.
Apparently, the officiating discussion was to whether this was taunting. Killens was heard advising "let's just say it is" to Hochuli. When he heard himself on the mic, Killens reacted as if he had cussed in church in front of his grandmother.
It was a white guy, Jensen, that ended up with the first nonsensical taunting penalty, but there's no doubt in my mind:
This whole thing from Rich McKay's competition committee comes with underlying racism.
McKay and the other old-timers charged with these "points of emphasis" think it's a bad look when cornerbacks and receivers spend a game exchanging insults, with dueling celebrations after receptions or deflections.
Every cornerback in the NFL and close to 90% of the wide receivers are Black.
"We've been giving each other abuse on a field, on a court, since I was a kid," said Ken Foxworth, recruited from Detroit and an excellent Gophers defensive back from 1976 to 1980. "It's not taunting; it's challenging the other guy. It gets you fired up."
McKay said the taunting edict came after requests from the NCAA and the NFL Players Association to take action. He was deceiving by at least half.
J.C. Tretter, Cleveland's center and the president of the NFLPA, responded to McKay thusly:
"I can assure you, as an attendee of the competition committee meeting myself, that was not the case. On the contrary, we would support the removal of this point of emphasis immediately."
Mike Conley was in Minneapolis, where he sounded the Gjallarhorn at the Vikings game, on Sunday during the robbery.
