I'm not good at remembering exact dates.

Anniversary. Birthday. Moving to Beijing. That's about it.

There is, of course, one more.

On Feb 5, 2006, one of the best bosses I'll ever have was mistaken for a homeless man - in my home.

On Feb 5, 2006, one of my buddies spent the night in a tree.

On Feb 5, 2006, my wife slapped her best friend across the face. Hard.

Don't tell me officiating doesn't matter.

The NFL season is going to start next week with teams of replacement officials as part of an ongoing labor dispute with the refs. That first-team officials regularly make face-slappingly awful decisions has cost them some leverage in their negotiations. But they're still the best at what they do.

Most of the replacements won't even have NCAA Division I experience. Even one week of trucked-in, third-tier scabs could very likely do enough damage to throw the season into doubt, even ruin it for huge swaths of fans.

On Feb 5, 2006, the Seattle Seahawks played the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XL. I'm 34, and I'm from the Seattle area. It was one of two times a Seattle team has played for a championship since I was a baby.

It was the most widely anticipated day in the region in decades.

The game is best remembered for the three questionable calls that swung a poorly played game the Steelers' way, and gave my boss, my buddy, my wife - and everybody else in a 1,000-mile radius - one of the weirdest nights they'll ever have. You wait your whole life for that game, and it's all ruined with three bad rulings.

It's no secret that pro football, maybe more than any other sport, comes down to a very few plays over a long season. An inch here, a bad call there - it can and does change the course of a game, a season, a whole city's history. It's high on the list of things that make for such an exciting sport.

Even worse for the NFL, this is the season football's concussion scandal seems to be reaching a crescendo. People are reconsidering whether they can, in good conscience, watch a game that can leave its players mentally ill, even dead. Poorly officiated games are a breeding ground for the kind of cheap shots that pose the greatest risk of head injury.

"The league has placed a lot of emphasis on player health and safety in the past few years and we do feel we are an integral part of that," said Michael Arnold, the head of the officials' union. "We think it is unfortunate and we really don't understand why the league is willing to risk player safety and the integrity of the game by utilizing amateur officials."

The refs' price tag is somewhere between $12 million and $18 million over the course of a five to seven year contract.

The NFL's TV deal brings in $1.9 billion. Per season.

Somebody needs to get slapped.

Dusty Lane is a sports copy editor who does not condone face slapping in most instances. You can reach him at dustylane@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 09/02/2012 page8)