Get over it

This is ridiculous.  I don’t just mean the juvenile behavior of the Oklahoma University officials in complaining about a bad call that ended up costing them the game.  I mean the apparent reactions of fans toward the officials involved.  One of the officials has been threatened.

The instant replay official whose failure to overturn a bad call led to a narrow Oregon victory over Oklahoma said Monday he feels like he is under siege after threatening phone calls, including a death threat.

"I can't sleep, I can't eat, my blood pressure is skyrocketing," Riese said, looking haggard and worn as he sat on the front porch of his house. Riese said he has stopped answering the phone, and police are investigating the threatening calls while keeping an eye on his neighborhood.

"They not only threatened me, they threatened my wife and kids," Riese said.

This is in response to the Oregon victory this weekend over an Oklahoma team that annually thinks it is the best in the nation.  It has been in the last two of three BCS title games, and this loss will probably keep it out of the next one.

Oklahoma lost the game 34-33 after Oregon scored two touchdowns near the end of the game.
An onside kick by Oregon after its first late touchdown was touched by a Ducks player before it traveled the required 10 yards, and the Pac-10 ruled that the ball should have been awarded to Oklahoma. The league also said that video revealed that an Oklahoma player actually recovered the ball.

Officials on the field gave the ball to Oregon, and replay officials did not overturn that decision.
During a subsequent play, pass interference was called on Oklahoma, setting up the winning score. The Sooners argued that the ball had been tipped at the line of scrimmage, thereby nullifying the pass interference call.

OK, here’s my message to Oklahoma fans and all those other peoples angry about this chain of events.  Get over it.  Really, this is patently stupid.  It’s a game people.  Anyone angry or despondent enough by the outcome of a college football game (heck, any football game) that they must resort to whining, complaining, tarnishing of other’s reputations, and finally threatening official’s families, DESERVES TO LOSE!  You’ve lost site of any truly important thing in life, and are stuck in a world where college life and athletics are your whole world (most people recover from that at age 20).

Listen.  Oregon is a PAC 10 B-team.  They’ve done good in the past, and are in a tough conference, but until they have a season like they did a few years ago with Joey Harrington at the helm, they are a middle-of-the-conference team.  Oklahoma is a perennial title contender.  If the Sooners can’t put away a division 1 B-team to the point where a missed call makes or breaks the game, then guess what.   They DESERVED TO LOSE!  

Missed calls happen all the time.  It’s what happens when you operate with human beings refereeing a gaggle of very large, colliding human beings.  In fact in every sport, controversy arises by errors made by perfectly reasonable and otherwise good referees.  In the Oklahoma-Oregon game there were probably a few bad calls, but the only one that’s going to get pointed out is the one that obviously turned the tide of the game.  Could Oklahoma have put this mistake behind them and done their best to rectify the situation.  You bet.  They had one more drive to put the game away, and on the last play of the game, their field goal was BLOCKED by Oregon!  They lost that game, plain and simple.  An athlete’s character is defined by how he or she deals with adversity and comes out on top.  Oklahoma football is not showing any amount of character this year.