NFL is bastardizing interpretation of a reception

Two weeks in a row I found myself screaming at my television during pivotal plays of NFL games. You're probably assuming that my favorite team botched a play or one of my fantasy players dropped a pass. Neither. In fact, the reason had nothing to do with personal interests and everything to do with watching how the NFL has completely ruined the idea of a reception. Last week, I watched as Plaxico Burress had a deep reception overturned on a challenge. This week, it was Reche Caldwell's 2nd half, first-down reception that was overturned. In both cases, the replay official determined that because that the ball moved slightly in the receiver's hands as it hit the ground, that the pass was incomplete. On both plays the receiver had complete control of the ball before they came down and at no time did the ball break contact with the player's hands.

As I had previously understood the rule for receptions, the ground is not supposed to aid the player in maintaining possession of the football. However, NFL officials now rule any situation where the ball moves at all when it hits the ground as being incomplete, even when a player clearly has possession. This is a complete bastardization of the spirit of a catch and does a huge disservice to players who make legitimate catches on big plays only to have them overturned by a nitpicky, lawyer-like replay official. In my book, if a player has complete possession in the air, hits the ground, and then comes up with the ball cleanly without it leaving his hands, that's a catch. I don't give a crap if the ball moved two inches from the ring finger to the middle finger of the left hand. The worst part of this whole trend though is that announcers and fans are buying into this and no one seems to be complaining. In both the Giants and Patriots games, the announcers were predicting that the completions would be overturned and seemed to agree with the calls.