The “tuck rule” still haunts Oakland Raiders fans. It was invoked in Oakland’s 2002 playoff game with the New England Patriots. What looked like a Tom Brady fumble suddenly wasn’t because the little-known rule was added to the books in 1999 and made it possible for the Patriots to re-gain possession of the ball, and eventually win the game.

Detroit Lions fans had similar feelings about the NFL’s little-known “failure to complete the catch” rule that cost Calvin Johnson a game-winning touchdown on the last play of a 2010 contest.

While I was watching the 2012 Super Bowl between the New York Giants or New England Patriots, there was a call at the end of the game that had me crying “foul!” at the rulebook, too, even though I had no rooting interest in either team.

With New England trailing 21-17 and 16 seconds left, the Patriots had the ball at their own 44-yard line, second-and-10. Tom Brady dropped back to pass, and threw an incompletion to tight end Aaron Hernandez.

However, the Giants had a little extra help: 12 men on the field. So, the Patriots got the ball five yards closer to the Giants’ end zone and would try again, second-and-5 from their own 49.

Normally, the 5-yard penalty would seem a fair remedy. The problem for the Patriots was that seven seconds ran off the clock.

That got me to thinking: if I’m the Giants’ coaching staff, where is the incentive to not try this again the next play? In that situation, I would surely give the Patriots five more yards in exchange for another seven seconds off the clock.

Supposing I’m able to use the extra man to force another incompletion, the worst-case scenario is that the Patriots would have one Hail Mary from my 46-yard line. And if New England were to complete the pass with 12 men on the field, the Giants wouldn’t have stopped the Patriots with 11 men, anyway.

Things like this keep me awake at night. Okay, not exactly, but they bother me enough to consult an official’s opinion about what seemed to be an inequity in the rules in that situation.

So, I called Jason McArthur, an up-and-coming NCAA football official, to get his perspective on this and other rules I find troublesome.

You may have seen McArthur on ESPN as the official that made the right call on one of the oddest plays in college football last season. It came during an NCAA FCS playoff game last year between Northern Iowa and Wofford. You can easily find on YouTube, or read about it here: http://thegazette.com/2011/12/03/uni-unwraps-a-gift-and-outlasts-wofford-28-21/

For starters, I asked McArthur to give an official's perspective on the particular play in the Super Bowl. Doesn’t a five-yard penalty in that spot seem unfair as a stand-alone solution? Shouldn’t time be added back to the clock in that situation also?

McArthur says he understands my line of reasoning. But from a rule book point-of-view, it’s interpreted consistently across all situations throughout the game.

“That’s how all live-ball fouls work. You never get your time back on the clock. … The play happened, the time was expended. The fact that somebody committed a foul, there are remedies for that, but the rule makers feel like 12 men on the field deserves a five-yard penalty. People do still score touchdowns with people having 12 men on the field, so they’re risking that,” he says.

McArthur says that just because a rule may seem to favor one team disproportionately in an end-game situation, it obscures the fact that both teams had ample opportunity to make winning plays throughout the game. So while my sense of justice isn’t completely satisfied, McArthur makes some good points.

But wait! What if the Giants decided they wanted to defend the field with 45 men on the next play, conceding five more yards to the Giants in order to run more time off the clock? This seeming loophole opens the door for absurd degrees of abuse… right?

Not so fast, says McArthur, who cites a remedy I wasn’t aware existed.

“Say, [the Giants] brought 40 players on the field or something like that… there is a rule in the NCAA rule book that’s sort of a catch-all that’s called the Unfair Act Rule,” McArthur says.

McArthur pulls out a rulebook and starts reading.

“The following are Unfair Acts: while the ball is in play, if any person other than a player or an official interferes in any way with the ball [carrier] or an official; or, if a team refuses to play within two minutes of being ordered to do so by the referee; or, a team repeatedly commits fouls for which penalties can be enforced by half the distance to the goal; or, an obviously unfair act not specifically covered by the rules occurs during the game,” he says.

“In any of these situations, a referee may take any actions he considers equitable, which includes directing that a down be repeated, including assessing a 15-yard penalty, awarding a score, suspending or forfeiting a game. That’s one catch-all.”

McArthur stops reading and clarifies further.

“An official can do anything he feels is equitable. In a game, if a referee thought that was what was happening, he could award more than a 5-yard penalty. He could do all kinds of things, including awarding a score,” he finishes.

McArthur cites the 1954 Cotton Bowl between Rice and Alabama as a time this principle was applied. Rice’s Dicky Maegle was seemingly on his way to a 95-yard touchdown run when Alabama’s Tommy Lewis leapt off the sideline and tackled Maegle on Alabama’s 42-yard line to “prevent” a touchdown. Officials rightly intervened to award Rice six points.

I asked McArthur about another pet peeve of mine: disproportionate penalties meted out between offensive and defensive teams on half-the-distance-to-the-goal-line situations.

For instance: the Giants have the ball at the Patriots’ 1-yard line on a first-and-goal play. The Patriots decide to play dirty on the next snap – perhaps deliberately grab the ball carrier by the face mask – and risk seeing if they’re caught. If the official sees the play, it’s only an 18-inch penalty, though a first down is awarded.

However, if a Giant were to do the same thing on the next snap, it would be a 15-yard penalty.

An enforcement that penalizes one team 30 times the extent it does the other team doesn’t seem fair there. Why not figure out what the penalty would be on the defense in that situation, and apply the same standard for the offense? In other words, if it were a half-yard penalty on the Patriots, it should be a half-yard on the Giants, too.

McArthur, though, says that kind of “justice” could end up being an official's nightmare.

“Every foul is an independent act that gets penalized according to the situation that then exists. You will open a can of worms if you try to enforce a penalty against one team based on what the penalty would have been had the other team committed it. It’s going to be a big mess, administratively.

“For example, suppose you had a play where one team commits a 5-yard, half-the-distance foul, and the other team commits a dead-ball, 15-yard foul. Under your proposal, how would you determine how many yards to penalize?”

“The rules makers were creating a system to deal with a situation where a penalty would leave the ball behind someone’s goal line, which would not make sense. That’s how the half-the distance thing came into play.”

I’m still not convinced, but I see his point. Every year, officials, already under enough stress on game days, have to become on-the-spot mathematicians in these instances. It’s tough enough to do the math in your head when the previous spot was the 23 ½ yard-line on a half-the-distance foul, and consequently, officials mis-mark distances every year. My proposal would only increase the chance for error.

He reminded me that the rules see the shades of gray in some of these situations already.

“Keep in mind that there actually is a major exception to that half-the-distance rule, and that is the defensive pass interference enforcement. For that one, the rules makers felt like, you commit a pass interference in the end zone, for example, that’s a reason to trump the half-the-distance rule. And the other reason is that the penalty for pass interference is a spot foul,” he says.

There’s one more situation that’s always bugged me. The Giants have the ball third-and-56, and the Patriots commit a defensive holding penalty. It’s a relatively minor infraction – that the rules permit just a five-yard walk-off against the defense.

However, it’s also a first down. Why should that be the case if the infraction is only worth five yards?

“The reason is, when you hold a receiver, you are preventing that receiver from running a route that’s 56 yards where he can catch the ball and get a first down. So, that’s why they’re going to say if you do that foul, it becomes too advantageous for you and too tempting for you to go ahead and commit the foul on third-and-56 because you’ll take a chance,” McArthur says.

“We don’t want you to do that, so we’re going to give them a first down if you use that tactic.”

This time, I’m more convinced. Take that rule out of the book, and you might see defensive holding on every pass play.

At the end of all this, you have to remember that officials don’t make the rules, they only enforce them. My conversation with McArthur reminded me how much officials have to know, and gave me a new respect for their jobs.