Bill Vinovich
See that guy in the white hat? He supposedly “did not see the play”. That video shows he is indeed watching it.
And since you have us looking at 'that guy in the white hat', look closely at the visual angle he has of that play. Do you think he can tell definitively how close/far the ball was from the moment of impact when you consider the
actual speed of that play? Or should he have repeatedly questioned the call of other senior officials who were in better positions to make the best judgment for that play? Vinovich did the only thing he was in position to do at the time.
Professional football happens very quickly, whether you are participating or only watching the action. The worse thing any official can do is to be wishy-washy in his judgments. I am not trying to clear these referees of the poor decisions that they made, and I'm also not inferring that Cavaletto didn't have some personal bias in wanting the Rams to come out on top. What I'm merely saying is that the calls (or lack thereof) made in the waning moments of that game wasn't some pregame mandate by Goodell, the NFL, or even these particular officials who were chosen to oversee that championship game. No plan was devised to ensure a Saints loss. It was simply one very strong-willed official who made a very poor judgment and didn't want anyone challenging his right to make that call... which he described to another official as being "bang-bang" in nature.
And even if Caveletto was some rogue referee, why would this guy who was supposedly so bent on eliminating the Saints (in an effort to promote the Rams), waiting until they were inside of 2 minutes and the Saints were deep inside the redzone before he would choose to use his 'power' to stop the Saints from scoring
even though his non-call wasn't a guarantee that the Saints weren't going to score??? Wouldn't he instead have been looking for opportunities to shut down the Saints' drive long before they got that close to scoring???
If it was Cavaletto's (or anyone's) intention to find a way to eliminate the Saints in that game, the Saints would never have been in the position to make the potential game winning score on that fateful drive so late in that game. Instead, faux calls
throughout the game would have put it far out of reach long before that drive.
Bill Vinovich is being held over the fire simply because he was on record as the head official for that crew. But none of these guys were the regular officials that Vinovich worked with during the season. As an NFL 'dream team' of referees he certainly considered all of these guys to be competent enough to make the correct calls throughout the game. Remember that the rule of
reviewing such calls had not even come into existence at that time, so it was not an option for him to check the replay. (Of course the league has since scrapped that idea.) No, I'm sure that Bill Vinovich would
never want to come back to New Orleans to officiate an NFL game. But it's not because he thinks he did something wrong. It is because he realizes that there is nothing that can be done to help all the
conspiracy crazed fans see the light of what really happened in the closing moments of that emotionally crushing game.