Detroit Lions get the joy of karma after Cowboys loss

The Dallas Cowboys now know what it feels like to be the Detroit Lions in a way. After their 21-26 loss to the Green Bay Packers, fans of the Cowboys screamed foul when a late minute catch close to the endzone by Dez Bryant was reversed. Most Lion fans called it karma, even players of the team felt the same way.

Even the Detroit Lions official Twitter account got involved in laughing at the Cowboys misfortune.

While the Cowboys yelled fouled as did the Lion fans the prior week, it does bring up a good point. If you have watched at least one game of the playoffs or all of them you may have noticed that the refereeing this postseason has been terrible. Actually terrible is a complement to these referees this postseason. Really a better description of how they have done would be atrocious.

I don’t like to blame referees for everything. In fact, I’ve seen fans call out refs when they think they cost their team a win, but in reality, the game had other factors that may have cost their team more than the call by the guys in between the lines. The biggest example of an official taking something away from a game was in 2010 when Jim Joyce missed a seemingly easy out call that would have given Armando Galarraga a perfect game.

The Tigers still won the game but it still hurt knowing that we didn’t get the perfect game, even though there was about a million different angles that showed he got the call wrong. As I got over it, I learned that it was just a human error.

Which is something fans forget when they yell at the officials in any sport. These men and women are not super human. They are bound to make mistakes from time to time, and we can’t get mad at them for it. Just imagine if while you were at your job and every time you made a mistake, people yelled at you for it. Bet you probably won’t want to work that job anymore.

Yet there are times that while watching the games referees will get calls wrong and then even though they look at replay they still get it wrong. That is the one time you can really blame the referees for the mistakes they make, because even with the chance to fix them they, well, fail.

In the end, for at least this postseason lack of good officiating your hate and blame should be going to the National Football League. The NFL I assume has this idea, if you officiate well in the regular season you should have the ability to go to the big games and do your thing. Seems reasonable and like a great idea, yet the way the NFL decided to do it this year had guys who have never worked together before working together.

Nothing could really be a worse idea than that. Being a referee is a lot like playing for a team. You work as a team with the same group of guys and you become good, like a typical team does. Then you are split up and given new teammates, it makes thing difficult. You’re working with guys you aren’t used to. So I mean while some blame can be placed with the referees themselves, it doesn’t help that the NFL messed up their good officiating team by splitting them up.

So Lion fans, Cowboy fans, you both can be made at the referees that were in your game that you lost. However understand that it may not fully be there fault. The fault may be more with the NFL and the way they pick their officiating crews for games that mean everything to players and fans alike.