Bruce Irvin jokes (?) NFL to ‘sabotage the Super Bowl’ by assigning infamous ref Gene Steratore crew to officiate

Right about now NFL official Gene Steratore is about as infamous in the minds of the Raiders and their fans as Walt Coleman (Tuck Rule). And it was revealed today that everyone will get to see Steratore’s crew officiate the Super Bowl.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Steratore was the one who whipped out an index card or piece of paper of some kind and folded it in half in order to measure a first down late in the Raiders loss to the Cowboys. All with an apparent smirk on his face that didn’t go over well with Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio.

The play was on fourth down and his first down ruling was crucial to the outcome as the Cowboys were able to keep the drive alive and go on to score.

You can understand how one of the Raiders linebackers who was on the field, thinking they had made the stop only to lose it by what seemed to be the width of a folded piece of paper.

“I’ve never seen that in my life,” Bruce Irvin said after the game. “He pulled an index card out of his pocket. I have never seen it but it is what it is. We can’t do anything about it now.”

“He was definitely short but I’m not going to get into that. I like my money too much so I don’t want to talk about the refs.”

Upon learning of Steratore’s Super Bowl assignment, Irvin took to twitter to make a pretty funny statement about it.

“How could they sabotage the Super Bowl like this?!” Irvin tweeted.

The outspoken linebacker usually seems to capture the mood of the fans pretty well.

And despite the Steratore stunt, and the league admitting it was unusual and putting out a memo telling all officials to never do that again, here is Steratore getting the call for the big game.

Gives the term ‘Paper champion’ a new meaning.