ST. LOUIS - Did your stomach start getting queasy around five o'clock yesterday?
That sinking feeling that you're witnessing a crime and you're frozen in time, incapable of doing anything about it? It's the part in a movie where the video and audio slows down - you reach out into time and space and scream out, "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!"
The Rams did the unthinkable and made it to the Super Bowl, and they're taking Smilin' Stan Kroenke with 'em.
Ick.
Did you see the pass interference play with the game on the line - the play that you, me, 73-some-thousand in the stadium and millions more watching the broadcast saw? The one that the officiating crew didn't see? How is that so? It was so blatant the perpetrator, Nickell Robey-Coleman fessed up that he knew it was a penalty. It was so obvious Saints coach Sean Payton got a call from a league official before he met the media after the game saying they blew it. It was so sickening I watched the rest of the game in a daze knowing a sure Saints win was ripped from their fingers.
The obvious takeaway is that there needs to be change saying that in a situation like that someone upstairs should buzz down to the field that the officials blew the call; to get it right. More in the present, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio dug up an obscure rule that gives Commissioner Roger Goodell the power to overturn the final score, send the Saints to the Super Bowl instead, or at least rule the game should be replayed from the moment of the foul - which you would think would result in a Saints field goal with very little time left on the clock.
Yeah, right. As if.
It's pretty obvious why you haven't heard a peep from the commish. (By the way, I'm still looking for the dictionary that accurately defines commissioner as "owner's stooge.") The outcome is exactly how the Gang of 32 wanted it. (Well, maybe 31) The NFL is doing everything imaginable to prop up their decision to plant a team in the L.A. market. Do I think they'd go so far as to silently tip the field in the Rams' favor? Yes I do.
It's like the NFL is thumbing their nose at St. Louis three years after they yanked the team away. And you can bet there was some nose-thumbing going on then.
I'm sure there's a much different feeling in L.A.this morning - at least from the handful of Rams fans there, the tiny fan base who isn't aching for the Dodgers to start playing again or for LeBron's injury to heal.
Call me bitter but don't call me on Super Bowl Sunday; more like Sickening Sunday.
And I didn't even get to the nausea from Sunday's other game.
