FanHouse Pat Lee

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In the fall of 2007, Brian Brohm was near the top of the college football world. Since then, not much has gone right.

His Louisville Cardinals flopped badly that season, missing out on the postseason. Expected to be taken in the first round of the NFL Draft, Brohm fell to the Green Bay Packers deep in the second. Seventh-round pick Matt Flynn beat him out for the job backing up Aaron Rodgers in 2008. Now, before his second season could begin, Brohm is looking for work.

Once a week FanHouse's resident referee will chime in with thoughts on major topics relating to officiating. We call it The Zebra Report.

Once again, the NFL's only famous official came under significant scrutiny this week ... and the game was on a national stage, being the Monday night contest between the Vikings and the Saints. There were two calls in particular that we'll check out.

Incident 1: Reggie Bush's facemask mangled, and no one saw it.
MDS already covered this here on FanHouse, but I wanted to point a few things out. First of all, please do not blame Hochuli. If you blame him, you don't know anything about officiating. Ed Hochuli is the referee, and the ball was moving away from him. If he was in proper position -- and I'm assuming he was -- he would have been watching the lineman on the backside and protecting the quarterback from unnecessary roughness. Even if he did glance over at the ball, which admittedly we have a tendency to do, he would have seen Bush's head turn from behind.

You still can't assume that's a facemask from his point of view. Allow me to present a scenario: