On Hochuli, NFL Drops The Ball

The NFL should do what's in the best interest of the game, which is change the rule today. I don't want to hear it can't be done because we just saw the NHL, during the Stanley Cup playoffs, amend a rule essentially on the spot in the best interest of the game.

It's plain lazy to say men as smart as the people who run the NFL can't get this right until March. It easily could happen again Sunday and cost a team a game and trigger another avalanche of hateful e-mails. The technology, obviously, is available. The people are there in the replay booth to apply it appropriately. The rule, as it's currently written, contradicts all common sense. But the NFL will sit around until March hoping to dodge another bullet. Too bad the people who vote on and implement the rules don't have the sense or urgency on these matters as Hochuli.

Yet, it's Hochuli's reputation that's taking the hit. The day after he blew the call, the NFL released a statement saying: "Officials are held accountable for their calls. They are graded on every play of every game. Ed has been an outstanding official for many years, but he will be marked down for this call. Under our evaluation system an official's grades impact his status for potentially working the playoffs and ultimately whether or not he is retained."

Retained? Does anybody who has watched professional football over the past 25 years want to question whether Ed Hochuli should be retained?

Everything has context, and Hochuli's body of work is unarguably impressive. Quite possibly, he's the best referee in the NFL. In a recent ESPN poll, head coaches said as much about Hochuli (who finished tied with Mike Carey). After only two years on the field Hochuli was promoted to crew chief. Yes, every official is graded on every call -- by former officials, first individually, then by the group. It's difficult to imagine a more thorough system of evaluation. This one call, which Hochuli realized in an instant was wrong and apologized for immediately, might keep him out of the playoffs? Is somebody better and less fallible going to replace him?

Hochuli played college football at UTEP. He works now as a trial lawyer. He is quoted in USA Today as having said of the pressures involved in his two careers: "A trial is nothing, pressure-wise, compared to the NFL. . . . I have that long [he snaps his fingers] to make a decision with a million people watching and second-guessing [by video] in slow-motion. You've got to be right or wrong. I love the satisfaction when you are right -- and the agony when you are wrong."

It was all agony through the middle of the week. The NFL wanted Hochuli to stop answering the e-mails and text messages. He seems accountable to such a level that only an order from his bosses would stop him from continuing to answer the correspondence. The good news, if there's any in this mess, is that while 90 percent of the e-mails on Sunday night and Monday were negative, a great many were supportive by Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. Perhaps the people who were e-mailing realized it was unseemly to hold Hochuli or any referee to a standard nobody in any workplace could measure up to: perfection.