Sports Law: Lions Robbed by Idiotic NFL Rule in Game Against Houston

We do not rant and rave at LawPundit for nothing about the sheer idiocy of some of the legal landscape, and this includes sports law.

Hear, hear, sponsors. We turned the TV off after the ruling in the Lions-Houston game that awarded an 81-yard touchdown to a run by Justin Forsett that was clearly not one, as Forsett's knee and elbow were both clearly down after about 5 yards.

Scoring plays are automatically reviewed but the Detroit head coach in a fit of emotion threw the challenge flag, which was totally understandable, but NFL rules -- apparently drawn up by people far from the madding crowd -- provide that throwing the challenge flag on a scoring play negates the review and also gets an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. Penalty OK, but granting touchdowns that were never made is idiotic beyond description.

So you make a 5-yard gain a faked 81-yard TD because the clueless officials did not blow the whistle and the coach was up in arms? If I were a coach in the NFL, I would now instruct all of my ball-carrying players to get up after any downing and run for the TD and see what happens thereafter. It won't hurt and you might even get a free score via bad officiating. Just keep running. This might extend the length of games by hours, but it would be fun to see what the league would do about that.

We seldom watch TV, except for sports, documentaries and news, and we definitely do not watch TV to get angry about the repeated injustices of this world being OK'd by egregiously flawed legal and rules systems, the NFL included.

See the Huffington Post at
Texans Edge Lions, 34-31, In OT: Houston Benefits From Controversial Touchdown.

Crossposted from SportPundit.