No Matter How They Look at This Play, We Missed It

After reading T.J. Simers’ “report” of the Tennessee-Buffalo game, I might have thought Mr. Simers was running for political office; the column was loaded with opinion disguised as fact. Mr. Simers “reports” the facts in the style of a Populist, as if all of us agreed with him and then that would make his opinion fact.

But best of all, he uses referee Phil Luckett’s past mistakes as evidence of his alleged present mistake. I like this reasoning because in the future, whenever I have reason to question Mr. Simers’ objectivity in his “reporting,” I will be able to look back on this poor example of reporting the obvious story here--the actual room for differences of opinion.

GLENN C. DAVIS

Laguna Beach

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I must complain again about the pathetic writing of T.J. Simers. He just took a tremendous play of a tremendous game and spinned it into a negative diatribe about the officials. The officials got the play right. Simers just can’t stand anything good or positive. I am going to make it my responsibility to complain to you until you get rid of Simers.

JIM GORIN

Whittier

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Tennessee’s Frank Wycheck is standing on the line, but his arm extension puts the ball about a foot or so over the line, which is where the ball was caught. The pictures in the L.A. Times do not show the release of the ball. Look at the New York Times for more fair-minded pictures--and reporting, for that matter. The replay looked to me as a sideways pass, but how can you say in a news story on the front page that it “looks” like a forward pass when it doesn’t? At best it is inconclusive, and I don’t think the officials should be ruling an otherwise brilliant play void if it is all but impossible to tell whether the pass is sideways or forward by a matter of inches. Reversing this would have been a football travesty, making one of the most brilliant trick plays of the century only a footnote.

DAVID BLOOMFIELD

Pacific Palisades

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T.J. Simers writes like a man who took Buffalo and 4 1/2 points.

WILEY C. ROSE

Temple City