Trashing the Game

Watching the television replays Sunday, the flashbacks pelted Sid Brooks like plastic beer bottles.

Those idiots in the Cleveland Browns Stadium stands?

Six years ago, Brooks was surrounded by their type.

The danger caused when the idiots flung hundreds of bottles to the field in protest of a blown officials’ call, a danger later condoned by the Browns and ignored by the NFL?

Six years ago, Brooks was dented by that danger.

Right above the left eye. Knocked cold for 30 seconds.

He had been hit by an ice chunk thrown from the stands at Giants Stadium, one of seemingly thousands aimed by fans at the San Diego Chargers, where Brooks worked as equipment manager.

“When I woke up, I asked our trainer, ‘Who did this?”’ Brooks recalled. “He pointed to thousands of people in the stands and said, ‘Take your pick.”’

The assault occurred early in the fourth quarter. Brooks eventually regained his feet and finished the game.

But the game still hasn’t finished with him.

Several years ago he began suffering head troubles that were related to the beaning. This year, while working as USC equipment director, Brooks missed two months of work and two football games because of the problems.

He says medication has cured him. But watching Sunday’s debacle made his head spin.

“It brought back a lot of memories,” said Brooks, a Vietnam vet and beloved local figure who has walked Southland fields for 29 years. “I saw all these people in the stands throwing things, probably some of them doctors and lawyers and bankers, and I wanted to ask them something.”

He paused.

“I wanted to ask them, what if somebody got mad at something you did at work, walked into your office, and threw a bottle at you ?”

Carmen Policy apparently wouldn’t mind. He’s the team president who, after the Browns’ referee-induced, 15-10 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, publicly encouraged the drunks and criminals.

“I liked the fact that our fans cared,” Policy initially told reporters Sunday, before apologizing for those remarks Monday.

Al Lerner also apparently wouldn’t mind. The Browns’ owner, apparently equating his fans to mindless animals, said the barrage was no big deal.

“Everybody controlled themselves considering they had spent 60 minutes outside in cold weather,” he told reporters.

Even, apparently, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue would welcome a bottle-wielding office guest.

About a half-hour after officials ended the game with 48 seconds remaining, Tagliabue ordered the teams back to the field to finish those final seconds even though Jacksonville had the ball, and the lead, and was required only to take a knee.

Of course, there were still several thousand fans remaining.

And, of course, all the participants were pelted again.

Tagliabue was negligent in placing league employees directly in the path of bodily harm.

Brown officials were unconscionable in promoting this harm.

Brown fans were despicable in causing this harm.

All this, and the initial ruling that led to the debacle was so wrong--using instant replay to change a play after another play had occurred--that the final seconds should be given an official mulligan.

For this country’s strongest sports league, a cowardly day indeed.

The old vet could not relate.

“I went back to Giants Stadium [last year] with USC to play Penn State, and a lot of people told me I should wear a helmet,” said Brooks, 66.

“I said no. I would not embarrass the people of New York. I would not embarrass the NFL.”

Sunday’s embarrassment began after the Browns’ Quincy Morgan made a questionable first-down catch of a fourth-down pass in the final minute.

The ball slithered around his body and appeared to hit the ground before he had control.

In the last two minutes of a game, coaches cannot challenge a play, and no apparent challenge came down from the replay booth.

So the Browns, with no timeouts remaining, ran another play, with Tim Couch spiking the ball.

At that point, with 48 seconds remaining, the officials suddenly waved their hands and ran together and everyone assumed the obvious.

Couch, who had faked a spike before actually spiking it, would be called for intentional grounding.

But, no. They were discussing the previous play.

This discussion not only clearly violated the rules, but fulfilled everyone’s fears about injecting technology into a human game.

If somebody can change a previous play after another play has been run

Terry McAulay, the rookie referee, claimed he was buzzed about the replay challenge before Couch’s spike, but that he just couldn’t move fast enough to wave his arms.

“We are in the middle of playing football, and that is an unnatural thing,” he told reporters.

Was it so unnatural that, despite hearing the buzzer, he didn’t even move a muscle? Replays show McAulay standing motionless during the entire Couch spike.

He didn’t look like a guy who had just been asked to stop the game.

If he was buzzed, either he didn’t hear it, or he suffers from a severe case of stage fright.

In either case, he was guilty only of behaving like a human being, which fans can accept.

But breaking the rules, going against his instincts, putting the game in the claws of a replay machine, fans cannot accept.

The NFL said that, essentially, as long as the buzzer is heard by the referee before the next snap, it doesn’t matter when he stops the game and reviews the play.

Good thing McAulay didn’t feel guilty and wait to review the play until after the Browns scored.

Just watch, this summer the replay system will be changed so this incident does not happen again.

It’s a shame that Tagliabue didn’t have the fortitude to change it on the spot.

If he could order the teams to return to the field, he certainly could have ordered that the Browns be given the ball.

He could order it still.

Of course, by now, given the nature of their fans’ behavior, the Browns don’t deserve the ball.

And to think, the Browns are only one of several NFL teams now selling beer in those stupid bottles.

“The bottles are plastic, they don’t carry much of a wallop,” protested Policy.

Yeah, and Sid Brooks was only hit by a snowball.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com