Attacking Phil Luckett

This is an update of a blog I wrote November 24th 2005.

Papa Johns has created a new promotion for the Superbowl that ridicules a friend of mine.  I know that I do not have many readers any longer but I hope that you will join me in emailing and contacting the companies and people involved and as many local papers as possible.  Phil and his family do not deserve to be attacked like this.

Anybody who knows anything about football will probably have heard reference to the "Luckett Rule."  This rule came into being because of an overtime coin toss in which Phil Luckett was the head referee and Jerome Bettis made the call while the coin was in the air.  What most people heard was Bettis call tails, the coin came up tails and Luckett gave the ball to Detroit who went on to win the game without the Steelers ever touching the ball.

This actually led to death threats and physical assaults for Phil and his family. 

Today that coin toss has been played over and over and over.  What most don't know, however, is that Phil made the right call.

Even the NFL acknowledged that Phil made the correct call.  Although you will be hard pressed to get them to admit it.

Perform a google search and you'll see an overabundance of sites denigrating Phil for his poor hearing, bad officiating and all around ignorance.  Even official NFL team sites are still calling it a screw up.  You actually have to work to find the official sites that have cleared Phil. 

Following the game and the explanation Jerome Bettis disputed the call.  He flat out called Phil a liar, something that I do not take kindly too.  Here's why.

22 years ago I was away, truly away, from my family for the first time.  I was in El Paso Texas for Basic Training.  One program that the military has is the opportunity to "adopt" or "sponsor" a recruit for Thanksgiving.  Phil, his wife and their daughter were kind enough to invite me into their home for the day.  But not just me, three other recruits as well.  I spent the day with them as they treated us like kings.

I kept in touch with them for many years and always got a kick out of seeing Phil on TV.  I saw them again at graduation, then kept in touch through mail.  Eventually I saw their daughter again when I reenlisted and went back to El Paso.  While I have lost touch with them they are always a part of me.

They are a good Christian family that thinks more of others than themselves.  Phil is an honest and hardworking man.  His wife is a sweet, compassionate and sensitive woman.  Their daughter is an intelligent and dedicated woman.  They are my friends and one of the reasons that I take issues of his honor very seriously.

Unfortunately Papa Johns has created a new promotion to sell pizzas and celebrate the Super bowl by continuing the attacks upon Phil.  Again, regardless of the fact that he was correct.  In addition they have included Peyton Manning in this promotion.  A player that I had come to respect for his knowledge of the history as well as the game itself.

Since neither Papa Johns, Pepsi, nor Peyton Manning bothered to perform the research on this subject I have provided several links below.  Please take the time that others did not and read the information.

While my respect and patronage may not add up to much in the long run I do, however, find it necessary to withdraw my support and respect for these products and persons.  I will not support those that find it “good business” to attack an honorable person who did nothing worse than perform his job correctly.

http://www.referee.com/sampleArticles/2001/SampleArticle0101/headsortails/headstailstext.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Luckett

http://www.inhistoric.com/2009/11/26/1165932/11-26-1998-the-turkey-day-coin-flip

http://www.post-gazette.com/steelers/19981201coin5.asp

Time for the holidays to be over

Get back to work and hire me alfuckingready.

Haven't been around much lately

And things will not change this week.  My mom and sister are coming in and we're going to be doing whatever it is our family does for a week.

One long ass trip

I spent my last week in Houston living in a seriously small hotel room.  Barely large enough for the bed and a table. Throw in my things and a cat and you probably get the picture on just how cozy the living was.  And I got to enjoy that for a whole week.  It was very exciting.  All the while I got to run around and hope for a miracle.  Which never materialized.  Not that I really expected it to.

This is where the fun really begins, however.  I filed my unemployment claim but before it could be deposited my stay at the hotel was up.  Normally I would have booked the room to stay that extra night but they don't skip the room cleaning every wednesday.  Oh, and they also do not allow pets.  So even if it had booked the extra night they would have kicked me out a day early.  Naturally they kept the "deposit" because of the cat but I expected that anyways.

I spent wednesday going through my storage space to figure out what I was going to take with me and what would be left behind.  Most of this was complicated by the fact that everything I took had to fit into my car.  And I happen to have a lot of shit.  Most of what I narrowed down was clothes and electronics.  DVD's and whatnot.  The only real problem was that I had no money at the end of the day.  No money means no gas to get underway.  Or to get a hotel room for the night.  So I slept in my storage space.

Yeah, you read that correct.  I pulled out the couch cushions, zipped my sleeping bags together and slept on the floor.  The way the storage unit is set up I actually had a unit at the end of a hall.  The hall simply connected to the parking area.  So I closed the door and settled in.  Unfortunately the storage facility is also a 24hr access.  About an hour after laying down the gate opens up and somebody drives in.  I don't think that I have to tell you that this is probably a situation I don't want to be caught in.  So I crawl out of my warm sleeping bags and get ready to explain myself if necessary.  After about 15 minutes they finish up and head back out.  I get settled back in and about an hour later they return.  I didn't really get to sleep until about 10pm.  At that point the temp could not have been much over 40 degrees. 

In the morning I was less than excited about climbing out of my sleeping bag but as it was getting clost to 7am, I figured I needed to do something.  Especially since I had a little while to kill before finding out if my check had been deposited.  If not, it was going to be a long day, and night.  Fortunately I get my unemployment and was able to get started on my long exciting drive.  I managed to get rolling out of town by 8:30.

But because I cannot do things normally, I managed to make a wrong turn while on a major freeway.  Driving down I-10 I got to San Antonio and somehow ended up on hwy 90 without exiting the freeway in any way.  I knew I was on the wrong road about 20-30 miles down the road but didn't really care because it was a nice enough day and I knew that eventually the hwy would intersect the freeway again.  After taking a look at an atlas I realized that I was never going to make it to my destination in the time that I had intended.  I had to take a side road to get back to I-10 and back on course.  After a nice short 14 hours and 851 miles I reached El Paso.

Normally I would have called Erin and seen about having dinner with her and her husband but I was entirely too tired for that at that hour.  Not to mention it was probably a tad late for an ex to be calling the house at any rate.  After unpacking the car and getting the cat settled in it was nearly 11pm and I was not looking forward to another early morning drive.  Add on top of all of this the fact that I seriously dislike El Paso and you will quickly come to the understanding that I just wanted to get to sleep and get the fuck out of town as quickly as possible.

I got a much later start the following day.  I think an extra hour was well worth the sacrifice.  Once again this was another truly exciting day of driving down I-10 for, well, ever.  Starting in Texas and ending in California.  It's not often that I've hit 4 or more states in one days drive.  And the snow on the ground in New Mexico was less than reassuring.

I do want to warn anybody who may be driving through Arizona.  If you are driving down I-10 near Phoenix and you come upon the Phoenix bypass, go ahead and drive through Phoenix.  I took the bypass, thinking driving through Phoenix during lunch would be too big a pain in the ass.  As it turns out, the bypass is a huge pain in the ass.  Putting aside the fact that it's incredibly out of the way, you get to enjoy the road construction that the bypass is undergoing.  I don't know who got the idea that construction zones would be faster than lunch rush but they should be dragged behind that front end loader.

After another 14 hours but a more productive 886 miles I reached Lebec California.  Normally I would have stayed up late and watched the elipse but after 14 hours and 886 miles, fuck that.  In fact I couldn't get to bed fast enough.  Even with the time change I was not looking forward to an early morning.  Did I mention that I had driven for 14 hours and 886 miles?

I drove the final stretch straight through.  1006 miles and 17 hours.  I didn't actually drive straight through, I stopped just outside of Medford Oregon to nap for a little while.  Long enough to get my head clear.  I also stopped more frequently to let Duchess stretch her legs and wander a bit. 

When I originally drove through California in 1999, it was literally through a fog bank the entire way.  From just north of Ventura all the way to Olympia.  This time I actually got to see the landscape.  And there really wasn't much to look at.  At least a fog bank would have kept me concentrating on the road.

The second and third day of the drive was really pretty uneventful since all that I could do was drive.  Once I arrived at my brothers house I unpacked the car and crashed on the couch.  Once everybody got up and moving it made for a very entertaining day. 

So here I am, back in Olympia.  Out of work and living with family.  Oh, and my car was repossessed.

Still setting up

So no update just yet.