Tuesday’s state court filing says the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, should implement a league rule governing “extraordinarily unfair acts.”
Rule 17, Section 2, Article 1, of the NFL guidelines state that the commissioner has the “sole authority to investigate and take appropriate disciplinary and/or corrective measures if any club action, non-participant interference, or calamity occurs in an NFL game which the Commissioner deems so extraordinarily unfair or outside the accepted tactics encountered in professional football that such action has a major effect on the result of the game.”
Remedies include reversal of a game’s result or the rescheduling of a game in its entirety or from the point when the act occurred. However, Saints fans may be disappointed by Article 2, which states that, “The Commissioner will not apply authority in cases of complaints by clubs concerning judgmental errors or routine errors of omission by game officials. Games involving such complaints will continue to stand as completed.”
At issue is the failure of officials to call interference or roughness penalties when a Rams player leveled a Saints receiver with a helmet-to-helmet hit at a crucial point in Sunday’s game. The NFL hasn’t yet responded to the lawsuit. A hearing is scheduled for Monday.
Elsewhere, a New Orleans businessman has rented billboards around Atlanta, the host city for next month’s Super Bowl, attacking the officiating in the Saints’ loss. One billboard reads “Saints got robbed”.
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