New Orleans Saints Continue Pre-Super Bowl Self Pity Party

In the span of a few days the New Orleans Saints have become the most insufferable team in the National Football League. Just in case you haven’t heard—and if you haven’t you’ve no doubt been in a coma for the past week—the New Orleans Saints are upset because of a pass interference call that should have been made late in the NFC Championship game. You might respond with the observation that ‘bad calls are just part of sports’ and you’d be right. The Saints ‘victimization’ is different, however, because of…uh…reasons.

In any case, the New Orleans’ franchise and fanbase is responding in the most classless way possible and unfortunately the mainstream sports media continues to fan the flames. The whining goes all the way to the top—Saints’ owner Gayle Benson released a statement in which she vowed to ‘aggressively pursue changes in NFL policies to ensure no team and fan base is ever put in a similar position again’. Benson’s ‘vow’ ranks among the most ridiculous things that has ever been said. How exactly does she plan to do this? Give any team whose executives, players and/or fans complain stridently enough about the outcome of a game the right to order a ‘do over’? Make ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith the final arbiter of what ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ happen in a sporting event?

The reality is that sports, like life, is a ridiculously chaotic process. When I’m trying to instruct neophyte handicappers the first thing I emphasize is that they immediately disabuse themselves of the notion that sports are like their video game counterparts. In a video game, many variables are hard coded into the DNA of the contest that can’t be duplicated in real life. In other words, an official can’t ‘miss a call’ in a video game. The code won’t allow it. The strange things that do happen in video games are also built into the coding meaning that injuries, missed tackles, etc. happen based on random number generation.

In a real world sporting event you’ve got hundreds if not thousands of ‘moving parts’ that can effect the outcome in both a positive or negative manner. Even deeper, these moving parts are all the responsibility of actual human beings. These humans make mistakes, get distracted and are otherwise imperfect like every other person on the planet. The only way to eliminate this is to take the humans out of the process. The problem is that this is impossible. Even if NFL football was contested by teams of robots or if Jared Goff and Drew Brees sat down on the 50 yard line and played a game of ‘Madden NFL 19’ the human element can’t be removed. You could take Goff and Brees out of the equation—set the video game to autoplay the Saints vs. the Rams for the right to go to the Super Bowl and the human element remains. The Saints could always blame the programmers that coded the game for the loss.

No one expects the New Orleans Saints’ team and fanbase to not be disappointed by the turn of events that they feel kept them out of the Super Bowl. In light of this, they’ve got every right to make their feelings known. At some point, however, you’ve got to turn the page. It’s not the responsibility of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, NFL head of officials Alberto Riverton or NFL Executive VP of Football Operations to eliminate the human element from professional football. Short of giving Roger Goodell the ability to ‘book’ the NFL to facilitate desired outcomes the way that Vince McMahon ‘books’ the WWE mistakes made by humans are going to happen throughout the complex ecosystem of a sporting event.