The recently completed NFL season saw several instances of horrible officiating.  Two of the more egregious examples were the messed up coin toss before the Steelers and Lions went to overtime on Thanksgiving and Jets quarterback Vinny Testeverde's phantom touchdown on the last play a game against the Seahawks which robbed them of a victory.  The predictable din which resulted from these incidents almost uniformly placed blame squarely on the officials.  They, after all, were the ones who screwed up.

But remember the particular circumstances of each event.  In the first scenario, audio replay clearly showed that the officials simply got the call wrong, resulting in a benefit to the Lions.  In the second, video replay showed that Testeverde was nowhere near the goal line when he went down (it wasn't a question of where his knee went down or anything - his helmet was a yard out of the endzone, for crying out loud).  None of the benefited players involved could have honestly believed that they were anything other than blown calls.  Not close calls that went their way, but completely blown calls.  In each instance, they fully accepted the benefits of the calls and rode them to victory.  So the question is, should the Lions or Jets have acted differently?  Should they have done the honorable thing and refused to benefit from the bad calls?  Before you think such a thing is ridiculous, read on.

One of the oldest and most prestigious competitions in the soccer world is the English F.A. (Football Association) Cup.  More than 100 years old (I think - feel free to correct me), the Cup is open to any club in England, from the lowest amateur clubs to the big buck professionals who inhabit the very top of the English Premier League.  Each round is single elimination, one team versus another, often with varying levels of skill.  Part of the charm of the F.A. Cup is that any team, any team, could win, if it can play well enough, regardless of finances or professional status.  The final, held annually at London's Wembley Stadium, is always an event.

This season's competition has progressed to the fifth round, with sixteen teams still alive.  One of those matches was played yesterday, between Arsenal and Sheffield United.  Arsenal are the defending Cup (and Premier League) champions and are currently third in England's top league.  Sheffield United is currently tenth in the English First Division (the equivalent of AAA baseball or the CBA).  This match is exactly the kind of thing that makes the F.A. Cup fun: can the underdog dump the highly favored big budget team and take another step closer to Wembley?

The game was a tight one, tied 1-1 going into the final fifteen minutes of the game.  A draw in F.A. Cup play means a replay would be held: basically, everybody gets together and does it all again (no PKs here!).  At that point, a player was injured, though from which team I am not sure.  Now, soccer is a free flowing game, without the constant starts and stops that characterize other popular American sports.  There is no provision in the rules for a stoppage in play simply to deal with an injury.  Usually, if the team in possession of the ball is not in the middle of the attack, they will put the ball out of play to allow the injured player to be treated.  The sportsmanlike gesture, which is common in the soccer world today, is then for the other team to throw the ball back in to the team which gave up possession to deal with the injury.

In this case, Sheffield United played the ball out to allow the injured player to be helped.  In an attempt to be a gentleman, Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour threw the ball back in towards Sheffield keeper Alan Kelly.  To the astonishment of the gathered crowd, not to mention the players, something odd happened.  Nigerian international Nwankwo Kanu, recently signed to Arsenal, sprinted towards the ball, took possession, and passed to teammate Marc Overmars who, thinking the game had fully restarted, slid the ball into the back of the net, passed a stunned Kelly.  The result was a 2-1 Arsenal lead, which would remain in place until full time.

What we have here is a situation somewhat similar to those NFL follies described above.  True, there was no official screw up here, and there is no written rule prohibiting Kanu's action (though an unwritten rule can be as powerful, if not more powerful, than a written one).  So, what was to be done?  In a fit of unbridled sportsmanship, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger offered, to both Sheffield United and to the Football Association, to replay the match.  Kanu, he claimed, had simply misunderstood what was going on (not a very plausible explanation, in my opinion, given Kanu's international experience) and did not intentionally play dirty.  The F.A. has apparently taken Wenger up on this offer, and the match will be replayed.

The point of all this, I'm not quite sure.  Does it say something about American versus English notions of sport and fair play that NFL players and coaches would willingly profit from an obvious injustice in play whereas their soccer counterparts go out of their way to correct the matter?  I don't think it has anything to do with the players themselves.  After all, soccer stars are just as likely to end up trying to get a cheap blow job from a cop as are self-righteous American football players.  Perhaps the difference is in how each society views the games.  Do Americans view their football as a war, to be won at any cost, as long as you don't get caught?  Do the English view their football as something more gentlemanly, something which should only be won for the right reasons and in the right way?

Maybe, I don't know.  It is something to think about, tho'.