Webster’s New Word of the Day: Hochuli’d

No, it has nothing to do with phlegm and the dispersion of fluids from the mouth. The new word as you guessed has a football-related definition:

Hochuli: (Hock-u-lee) verb - to be penalized in a football game by a referee who apparently saw something no one else in the 40,000+ seat stadium saw. Said penalty must be so severe as to change the outcome or have the potential to change the outcome of the game and incur the wrath of fans everywhere. Word derived from the name of current NFL referee Ed Hockuli who after a stellar career began a series of perplexing calls in the 2008 season.

I'm sure everyone is now aware of Ed's bad call that essentially cost the Chargers a victory in week one. In that case Ed saw the ball remain in QB Jay Cutler's hand longer that it actually was. It's hard to blame bad vision on that (but I hope he gets his eyes checked anyway). It sounds more like an action imagination. Ed expressed remorse but if the Chargers finish one game out of the playoffs he's going to hear about it for a long time.

Now in week four it's the Carolina Panthers who have received the short end of an Ed Hochuli vision. On the 3^rd play of the game and rookie QB Matt Ryan's first pass he throws an interception to Panther nickel CB Richard Marshall who promptly high-stepped it into the end zone for a defensive TD. One can hardly blame Ryan since a one Julius Peppers was in his face when the he threw the pass.

Hold that celebration, big Ed the visionist says DE Julius Peppers had one of those ‘helmet hits' (the words he used) and Ed isn't about to doubt his own eyes. Besides, Ryan is a rookie who doesn't know better yet to duck when the 280 lb Peppers is running full speed in his direction, so he needs extra consideration.

I thought it was a bullshit call when it happened and after reviewing it again I still think it was crap. Peppers face mask grazed Ryan's face mask, that's it. There was no blow to the head, no helmet-to-helmet and no malice in the hit. It was a straight-up high tackle where Peppers wrapped up Ryan around the pads. Would he have preferred him to go low? Apparently others took notice too.

Fortunately for the Panthers they still had most of the game remaining to make up for it, which they did. Still the point remains, Ed saw something that didn't happen. I wonder if he has astigmatism, the condition when your eye requires extra time to focus. Maybe Ed's brain filled in the missing part while his eyes were focusing on the action.

So I called Webster's to see exactly how many bad calls a referee would have to make in order to get his own definition and they thought it would require more than two. So is there any way to know which game Ol' Ed is going to officiate each week? We could put out a Hochuli alert (now it's a noun) for each game he is assigned. Soon all the other ref's will worry about making their own ....Hocheli calls (Ooo...now it's an adjective). Could we be on the cusp of a ‘see' change in NFL officiating?