I went above and beyond the call of blogging duty to make sure I could author an incredible NFL recap from this weekend. There are very few reasons to miss the 10-hour window known as Sunday football…the birth of your child, that same child’s college graduation, a funeral, your triple bypass heart surgery.

And apparently your best friend’s 31st birthday celebration in Palm Springs. More specifically, a friend who will relentlessly guilt trip you if you don’t show up just because football is more important.

That’s where I was this weekend, and instead of simply missing most of the games on Sunday, I DVR’d the Red Zone Channel and plowed through over six hours of football when I finally got home. That meant I couldn’t check on my fantasy teams, my bets, my Pick ‘Em league failures or any other live sports news until I caught up on everything. That’s how important it is for me to see every possible NFL play over the course of each week.

And even though I started yet another job on Monday morning, I was determined to watch the Patriots-Panthers game and stay up late writing the recap blog so it would be ready to go before I left for work on Tuesday morning.

And, man, did I have some good material for you people (anyone think going into the weekend that we’d see seven out of the 30 teams have at least two people play quarterback at some point in their respective games?).

But I’m giving you none of my brilliant observations from week 11. And you can thank Clete Blakeman for that. Call it me boycotting the NFL for a few hours after the referees royally screwed my Patriots on Monday night.

The beauty of me being an even-keeled person is that when I do finally go berzerk over something, I carry so much credibility. A lot of New England fans got fired up when the Patriots lost to the Jets a month ago on the new “no pushing your own teammate” rule. But not me. I felt like it was a correctly called rule that just seemed sketchy to call for the first time in NFL history on such a defining play. But either way the Patriots should have never been in that position.

And because of my measured approach to that situation, I feel that when I say, “The Patriots got absolutely, totally, ridiculously fucked on that final play of Monday’s game,” I will be taken seriously.

The funny thing is usually I see so many people on Twitter saying the Patriots and their fans are just being entitled crybabies. But not this time. 100% of the people I follow on Twitter and every member of the media on TV (non-Gerry Austin category) agree that Gronk got bear hugged illegally in the end zone.

The funniest part about the whole thing is that Patriots fans would have been bitching about a non-call after seeing the replay even if there was never a flag thrown. But one of the officials obviously saw the penalty and threw the flag. There’s no logical reason to overturn that call except that the refs as a group feared for their lives by their correct call handing the game to the visiting team in Carolina. I can’t think of any other reason for it.

And now this awful call will play a huge role in the playoff races. If the Patriots lose to Denver on Sunday, they’ll have almost no chance left at getting home field advantage throughout the playoffs and might even be in trouble for the #2 seed. If it comes down to a one game difference in their seeding, this will be just as bad as Green Bay getting the #3 seed instead of the #2 seed last year because of the Seattle fake hail mary play.

So thank you, Clete Blakeman and the rest of your officiating crew, for illegitimizing the 2013 NFL season.

Week 12 picks coming on Thursday, but who cares about picking games for a sham sporting league anyway.