Rams vs. 49ers: NFL admits officiating error in lost clock time

The officiating in the St. Louis Rams' Week 10 tie with the San Francisco 49ers was sub-par, at best. Losing more than a minute of clock time while measuring off a 49ers play. The league admitted the error on Monday afternoon.

NFL also says that roughly 1:19 of time ran off the clock in the Rams/49ers game that should not have.

— Jason La Canfora (@JasonLaCanfora) November 12, 2012

On the one hand, meh. Catching the error after the fact does nothing to rub some greasy salve into the open wound of a lost opportunity.

On the other hand, THE NFL ADMITTED IT FUCKED UP. That's way more than you can say over the whole replacement referee saga, when the league stood by its attempt to replace professionals with scabs all in the name of adding a few hundred thousand dollars to the bottom line over the next decade, a decade in which the league will be making $7-9 billion annually on TV revenue alone.

And that awkwardly segues into my point about the replacements. There were more than a few who said this incident proved the replacements were no better than the regular refs. Wrong. Replacement refs screwed up systemically. This is one sordid incident in which a stadium clock keeper forgot to check is watch, clock keepers being NFL employees separate from the refs that were locked out this year.