This definitely was a game deciding play, and the replay officials should have been able to see it. I have no idea why these people are making the kind of wages they do, then not having the guts to make the tough decisions. If an official blows a call, he blows it, and they need to change it on the spot. The idea that it "destroys the integrity of the game" is pure BS.
The front office whines that it will take too long to play a game. They say people were complaining. So, they changed the out of bounds ruling on plays. They run the clock on a lot of plays which would have stopped the clock. Did it actually shorten the game?
Yes. They shortened the game itself. What they didn't shorten is the time that it takes to play a game, on our clocks. The roughly 15 to 20 minutes they shaved off the game itself was then added in as officials time outs, and stoppages of play where they could insert more advertising. In fact, the time outs are two-minutes long. Check it on a stopwatch. They are longer. There is at least two-minutes of commercials during each time out, and there is time before, and after it was called as well. In fact, if you time the commercials, you'll find that the time outs are often about 3 minutes long, and sometimes even longer. The networks stick as many commercials as possible in, and stretch that 2 minutes constantly, to give them more advertising dollars. An additional thing that has existed for 60 years is a person on the sideline, from the network, who wears a cap, and when they can resume play, removes it. The network determines the actual time consumed, and nobody challenges it.
They shortened the game, but the time is just as long from start to finish as it was 60 years ago. They're lying to us. The complaint that games will run too long with more reviews is them saying they aren't going to do it unless they get to use that extra time to sell more commercials and get more money from the networks. It's coming though. Wait for it.
