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pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. Also, if the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble.
    The Patriots retained possession, scored a field goal on the final play of regulation, and won in overtime. Technically, Coleman appears to have made the correct call, but to many fans it didn’t feel right to have an official insinuating himself into the game and going deep into an obscure part of the rule book at such a critical time. A decade later, the “tuck rule game” persists as one of the most controversial moments in NFL history. The “Tyree Catch,”on the other hand, is hardly famous for its controversy. And the NFL’s reaction was telling, too. The league did not offer Coleman up for a media tour the way they did Mike Carey.
    For an even more vivid illustration of how fans and athletes expect officials to remove themselves during the key moments of sports contests, consider what happened at the 2009 U.S. Opentennis tournament. In the women’s semifinal,Serena Williams, the 2008 defending champion, facedKim Clijsters, a former top-ranked player from Belgium who’d retired from tennis to get married and start a family but had recently returned to make a spirited comeback. Although the draw sheet indicated that this was a semifinal match, the fans knew that it was the de facto final, pitting the two best players left in the tournament against each other. That Clijsters had beaten Serena’s sister, Venus, a few rounds earlier infused the match with an additional layer of drama.
    This was the rare sporting event that lived up to the considerable buildup. Points were hard fought. Momentum swung back and forth. As powerful as she was accurate, Clijsters won the first set 6–4. At 5–6 in the second set, Williams was serving to stay in the match. It was, as the cliché-prone might say, “crunch time.” Clijsters won the first point. Williams won the next. Then Clijsters won a point to go up 15–30.
    Two points from defeat, Williams rocked back and belted a first serve that landed a foot or so wide of the service box. The nervous crowd sighed. Williams bounced the ball in frustration and prepared to serve. After she struck her second serve but before the ball landed, the voice of a compactly built Japanese lineswoman,Shino Tsurubuchi, pierced the air:
“Foot fault!”
    Come again? A foot fault is a fairly obscure tennis rule dictating that no part of the server’s foot touch—or trespass—the baseline before the ball is struck. (Imagine a basketball player stepping on the baseline while inbounding the ball.) Players can go weeks or even months without being cited for a foot fault violation. In this case, the violation was hardly blatant, but replays would confirm that it was legitimately a foot fault.
    Williams lost the point as a result. The score was now 15–40, with Clijsters only a point from winning the game—and the match. As the crowd groaned, Williams paused to collect herself. Or so it seemed. Instead, she stalked over to Tsurubuchi, who was seated to the side of the court in, ironically, a director’s chair. Then, in a ten-second monologue, Serena splintered whatever remained of tennis’s facade as a prissy, genteel country club pursuit. Glowering and raising her racket with one hand and pointing a finger with the other, Serena barked: “You better be f—ing right! You don’t f—ing know me! … If I could, I would take this f—ing ball and shove it down your f—ing throat!”
    Having already been assessed a penalty for smashing her racket earlier in the match, Williams was docked a point. Since the foot fault had made the score 15–40, with the docked point the game and match were over. Bedlam ensued. Confused fans, shocked by the sudden end to the match, jeered and booed. Williams marched to the net, where officials were summiting, and protested. Slamming her racket, she walked