The NFL has had to deal with myriad officiating issues over the year, and it looks like the league might have to deal with one more before we close the book on the 2015 season.
When the NFL announced its officiating crew for Super Bowl 50 back on Jan. 27, no one thought anything of it, but now people are talking because the replay assistant for the game, Jimmy Oldham, is from Denver. Not only that, but his family was at the game on Sunday, openly rooting for the Broncos. Oldham's wife even took a picture with head referee Clete Blakeman over the weekend and posted it to Facebook.
In a statement on Tuesday, the NFL made it clear that the replay assistant is only there to help during the game and doesn't actually make any decisions.
"The replay assistant has no input into replay decisions and is on-site to help facilitate communication between the referee and the Vice President of Officiating, Dean Blandino, who typically works from the league's officiating room in New York," the NFL told The Big Lead. "For the Super Bowl, Blandino was on-site at Levi's Stadium working from the instant replay booth with the replay official, Charles Stewart, and was in direct communication with the referee during all replay reviews."
Oldham has been a replay official since 1999 and Super Bowl 50 was his second time working the big game, according to his work bio.
In one sense, the fact that Oldham lives in Denver isn't a big deal, but in another sense, it is, because you don't want to give anyone a reason to think there was any impropriety during the game.
One of the biggest officiating calls of Super Bowl 50 actually involved replay, and the outcome ended up being controversial. After a Jerricho Cotchery catch was ruled incomplete, Panthers coach Ron Rivera challenged the call because he thought Cotchery had made the catch.
Even in the NFL this is a catch pic.twitter.com/q2oRDN2tGw
— The Cauldron (@TheCauldron) February 8, 2016
Although it looked like a catch, the call stood on the field: Incomplete.
Rivera still thinks the officiating crew made the wrong call.
"Based on what I saw, I disagreed with it. And the answer I got was that they didn't have enough evidence to overturn," Rivera said after the game. "If the official said it was a completion, that would have been ruled a completion. Instead he called it an incompletion and we've got to live with it."
Again, Oldham wasn't technically involved with the call -- Blandino and Stewart were -- but if Panthers fans believe that having a Denver guy in the booth affected the outcome, that's not a good look, especially because of what happened next.
Two plays after the Cotchery replay, Cam Newton was stripped of the football and Malik Jackson ended up recovering the ball in the end zone for a Broncos touchdown to put Denver up 10-0 in the first quarter.
Although the NFL assigned Oldham to the Super Bowl, it's not unprecedented for the league to pull an official due to a conflict of interest. As Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio pointed out on Tuesday, a side judge was pulled off a Saints-Panthers game in 2012 because he was a huge Saints fan.
Ex-NFL supervisor of officials Jim Daopoulos explained in 2012 that there are many league officials who have rooting interests, and the league would prefer that those officials don't share their rooting interests by posting pictures to social media.
(Wink of the CBS Eye to The Lead Sports)
