Naked Gun Flashbacks?

Watch here for the fantastic Leslie Nielsen umpire scene in the Naked Gun. Anyone else experience flashbacks to this scene last night while watching the tentative ref with no vantage point slowly raise his arms in the air to signal touchdown? While he didn’t do the moonwalk after that, my guess is that deep down, he was pretty pumped hearing the crowd go nuts.

Odd thing was it seemed to me that he only signaled TD because he thought the ref with the much better vantage point was going to signal touchdown (instead of touchback, which was the right call). In a frenzied atmosphere, I think from a fundamental psychological perspective, the guy had to be thinking “disappoint 70,000 rabid Seahawks fans and possibly get injured by flying projectiles leaving the field, or just give them the TD and listen to the crowd roar…for me”. Easy call.

Actually I think I’m giving the guy too much credit here – I honestly think he thought the other guy was just going to signal a TD, so he did too. That they didn’t seem to discuss this critical call at length after that was ridiculous – especially considering how important it was in that situation to get the on-field call right before heading to the replay booth.