50 Super Bowl calls, Part 4: XX to XI

The Football Zebras staff -- with the assistance of our affiliated forum, Behind the Football Stripes -- has examined the Super Bowls of years past for the work of the officials who, in a given year, achieve the honor of the best of the best. While every team competes for

5 observations from conference championship weekend

It was a great weekend of football, and the conference championship officiating crews did well by their respective games. 1. Umpire Bill Schuster had the game of his life Number 129 was everywhere Sunday night.  He jumped in between potential combatants, dug to the bottom of fumble scrums, hustled to get the

1975: No OPI on Hail Mary pass, official knocked out cold by flying bottle

Dec. 28, 1975 NFC Divisional Playoff: Cowboys at Vikings Thirty-five years ago, "Hail Mary" became a football term after Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach so described the desperation pass that connected with Drew Pearson in a playoff game with the Vikings. In the final drive, the Vikings were convinced that the touchdown should never

Week 12 open forum, assignments

Updated 11/29 for new feature, below If you see a call that is a turkey, let us know in the comments section of this post. Referee assignments are after the jump. Update: Starting this week, we will update the open forum with any calls we read about that aren't worthy of

Leavy says he’s haunted by Super Bowl XL calls

With an unbelievable amount of candor, referee Bill Leavy admitted that he made game-changing mistakes when he officiated Super Bowl XL in February 2006—mistakes that helped propel the Steelers over the Seahawks. It was immediately branded as one of the worst called Super Bowls in history. The Seattle Times ran a