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Super Bowl Referee, Head Of Officiating Not On Same Page During Press Conference

PHOENIX (CBS) -- Welcome to the NFL, where nobody knows the rules -- not even the ones who enforce them.

With Super Bowl XLIX just three days away, one might expect that the game's referee and the head of NFL officiating would have worked out a plan on how to handle certain situations. After all, this is the same referee -- Bill Vinovich -- who was on the field when the Patriots ran those controversial-but-completely-legal formations in the divisional playoffs against Baltimore.

And with Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll saying Thursday that he's been told that officials will use a new signal to indicate any ineligible receiver on any given play, you'd think that this was all the end result of some meticulous and careful planning on the part of the league's officiating department, which is headed by Dean Blandino.

But, well, you'd be wrong.

The dysfunction that is officiating in the NFL was summed up perfectly in just one tweet from the Boston Herald's Jeff Howe:

Yikes.

With just 72 hours between this press conference and kickoff, it's pretty obvious that Blandino and Vinovich have some work to do, lest the officials look confused -- err, more confused than usual -- during the biggest sporting event in the world.

Read more from Michael Hurley by clicking here. You can email him or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.

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