And you guys wonder why I'm not watching the SB, and like Bill Burr really don't watch Chiefs games.
First, the UFL uses something called TruLine technology in their balls. This is a chip in the ball that has some tech that gives an extremely close evaluation where the ball is, including rotation and end to end. This is very quickly accessed by the league officials, so they know precisely where the ball is at any given time.
What are the refs saying between plays, when discussing calls? Guess what, the UFL has a solution to that too. All officials are mic'd up, all the time. Every one of them, and it's frequently heard what they are discussing. The UFL also uses a replay official and team (led by Blandino or Pierra), who watch every play and every angle. If the refs blow a call, they can review anything. They can also stop play if on a previous play the refs botched something, or just didn't call something. In the KC-Buffalo case, they would have stopped it at the 3rd down and given Buffalo the obvious first down.
Also, in the UFL the coaches have one challenge per half, and can challenge any call, on any play. Even hard to gauge ones like holding and DPI. What to challenge it? Go for it.
What keeps the review process from taking forever? There's a time limit. If the officials can't overturn a call in like 90 seconds, the ruling on the field stands.
In the entire time I've watched the UFL and before the leagues merged the USFL and XFL who had almost the same exact officiating, I've seen one blown call. It was on a very close play and Blandino and his team made a ruling just before the time limit. Right before the next ball was about to be snapped, he openly admitted (because he's mic'd up too), he and his team might have blown the call. Both he and the UFL owned it right after the game. We're talking about one single call, that was extremely close, and didn't change the outcome of a game at all, in three years of the leagues being around. One call.
The NFL has what seems like a few per game. And in this last week, two in the same set of downs.
I'm not saying the entire NFL is rigged. But I do think there is pressure, if surreptitious, on referees to push the money. It's a hard book to read, and an ugly one at times, but what Burr was referring to about the NBA is what Tim Donaghy wrote about in his book, Personal Foul. It starts out like Tim has sour grapes at a pity party, but the more you read and think on it, as he goes into lengthy detail at times on favoritism in officiating, and how it's done, how referees in the NBA, but other sports as well, favor teams and players, and how almost like an omerta. It's unspoken but well known in leagues where there is massive amounts of money, and massive amounts of gambling. Donaghy was a piece of garbage when a ref, a criminal, and caught. But it also becomes painfully clear when he was caught he came clean and spilled his guts, ruining his career forever (even the FBI said he eventually told the 100% truth).
Ask yourself this: The NFL prints money. They are massively successful, insanely so. They have more money than God. They could easily implement all the things the UFL does, and even other tech like the video editor what he did. They could easily afford this. Pennies under a seat cushion. It would be so easy for the NFL to adopt this and more, change this, but they don't. Why? What reason could there possibly be?
Instead what we have, and this is even bad for the Chiefs, is the topic now isn't football, it's controversy. Just look at this thread. Not just my post, all of yours. And it's that way across the entire web. Does the NFL care? Not really, as they are making more money.
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