Broadcasters Piss Me Off

I'm always irritated whenever an announcer says "the ground cannot cause a fumble," and they say that all the time. But it's just not true. If a player is running with the ball in the open field and trips over his own feet, or runs into a teammate and the ball hits the ground and pops free, that's a fumble. Obviously, this doesn't happen often, so normally when a guy hits the ground and the ball comes out, he's been hit by an opposing player sometime on the way down. In this case, he would be down and it wouldn't be a fumble. Not because the ground can't cause a fumble, but because the player is down before the ball comes out. Also, announcers often say this when talking about a reception versus an incomplete pass, which is a completely different situation.

So anyway, when for the first time I hear a commentator correctly say that the ground can cause a fumble, it's a little irritating that he does it when the runner is so clearly down that there isn't even any question about it. But that's what Phil Simms did yesterday. Willie Parker's forearm hit the ground, as he was being tackled, and the ball came out. You would think that playing in the NFL for a while, and winning a Superbowl would actually indicate some basic grasp of NFL rules, but Phil Simms apparently managed to get by without it. He actually tried to argue during the review that he wasn't sure if the players forearm being down was enough to overturn the call on the field of a fumble. Huh? Idiot. And he actually said, "but his knee isn't down." Even worse, Jim Nance didn't correct him. And when the official very clearly said that the forearm was down, and there was no fumble, he didn't even correct himself, he still said he didn't know if just the forearm would be enough to overturn the call.