Did it happen at band camp?
The Mud Bowl AFC championship game January 23, 1983 when the NFL and referees like Miami get away with not putting a tarp over the field, so the mud would slow down the Jets potent offense.
Don Denkinger, 1985 World Series:
Referees standing by allowing a snowplow operator to remove the snow from the spot of a game deciding field goal:
What were they supposed to do, tackle him?
I haven’t seen this one mentioned yet:
MLB (2011) - Pittsburgh Pirates vs Atlanta Braves: Catcher Michael ‘Fort’ McKenry tags runner Julio Lugo in front of home plate. Ump calls Lugo safe as the winning run in the bottom of the 19th inning …but that was just a mid-summer regular season game.
The 1985 World Series and Galarraga’s near perfect game also came to mind immediately, but those have been rightly mentioned already. The stakes were higher in those games.
I remember an Oakland Athletics game circa 1994 where an A’s batter hit a long fly ball that clearly bounced off the yellow foul pole…trajectory shifting obvious no-doubt-about-it type bounce…and the ump called it foul rather than a homerun. A’s manager Tony LaRussa was boiling with anger during his argument with the ump. Did the ump not know the rules? I have not been able to find video of this one online.
I don’t follow American NCAA football much and didn’t know about the ‘5th down’ score in 1990 until reading this thread. That gets my vote for ‘most blatant’.
^ after 19 innings, im sure he just wanted to go home. 
That said, even though the umo apparently admitted his error, that tag looks relly close to me as to whether it touched the runner. I’m not sure it does. I suppose he should be out by “neighborhood play,” but that’s not an official rule.
Graham Poll booking a twice, but failing to send him off (only sending him off on the 3rd booking!) during the 2006 World Cup. That is just an unforgivable error for a top level referee to make, especially at the World Cup.
They could have moved the ensuing play to the opposite, unaffected side of the field.
They could have done lots of things. But I don’t think “rogue snowplow operator inappropriately clears spot” is actually covered under the rules, so it’s hard to see it as a “blatantly incorrect officiating error.”
You’ll figure it out. I still have faith in you.
How about the 1979 Rose Bowl phantom touchdown? Charles White fumbles the ball a couple yards out but not to worry, the TD counts!
Certainly looks like a blown call, and the umpire the next day said “I got it wrong”, but in the following days lots of people looked at that video, especially the second angle and said he actually got it right. The catcher does a sweep tag, and in the second angle, it certainly looks like he may have missed it. You don’t see the glove bend or flex as it goes across the leg, and you don’t see the fabric on the pants move at all.
Nowhere near the most egregious.
I remember one from late in the 1979 NFL Season. Houston vs. Pittsburgh, fighting for the division lead. The Steelers have scored late to make it close and are obviously going to try an onside kick. The official dutifully sets himself up exactly at the minimum recovery line, the kick goes to that side, is scooped up by a Steeler about 2.5 yards beyond (clearly untouched till then), and the recovery is somehow ruled invalid. Granted, it did not affect the future of the universe much as Houston lost the division title the last week and Pittsburgh went on to another Super Bowl win.
Perhaps not a “bad” call but if there ever was a moment for a payback noncall (albeit later in the year vs. a different opponent) it was when Rocket Ismail returned a punt (idiotically kicked right at him by Colorado) for a touchdown that would have kept Colorado from that five-downs national title, had there not been a flag thrown for clipping. The fact that I was an ND fan has only about 60% to do with my opinion.
Wait, so a bad call in an NFL game merited a payback in a college game?
ETA: Oh, I think you mean the payback was for the five-down call, and not the Houston vs. Pittsburgh game. It didn’t read that way at first.
Please do enlighten me. Since your own cite states that there was “no rule explicitly barring such use of the plow”, what exactly were the officials to do?
Yeah, that is definitely the worst call I personally have ever seen in a game I was watching live. I remember it vividly.
Your own link calls the play “a source of controversy and speculation”. It may or may not have been a bad call, but it wasn’t OBVIOUSLY bad, which is the subject of this thread.
It was an obviously bad call to those of us who were Raider fans and were watching the game.
Let me ask you a simple question: are referees standing around, hands on their hips, allowing a homer snow plow driver to clear the snow for their place kicker who.e the opposing coach is screaming bloody murder “blatant” or not?
Even the NFL commissioner admonished this. What don’t you GET?