The closest thing to an official league position came from Payton, the Saints’ head coach. While the relative silence may seem odd in the age of very public apologies and mea culpas, the N.F.L. referee, officiating the biggest game of the season should have been an honor for Leavy. “It left me with a lot of sleepless nights, and I think about it constantly,” Leavy told reporters in Seattle in 2010, four years after the game. Yet, like a lot of things that happen in the N.F.L., which has a dense, 89-page rule book, it is never that simple.

Source: New York Times January 22, 2019 04:04 UTC