AMERICA AT LARGE: It was a blunder of such monumental proportions that the National Football League, which can usually find a way to excuse anything, felt constrained to issue a communiqué the following morning, the substance of which might be expressed in three words: We screwed up.

"We felt that with the unique circumstances involved, we owed it to the teams and the fans to disclose the facts as soon as possible," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello in explaining the unprecedented mea culpa.

The apology isn't likely to make the New York Giants feel much better.

The Giants will spend the rest of the winter tormented by the knowledge that even after frittering away a 38-14 lead over the last 16 minutes of Sunday's NFC play-off game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and suffering a mass implosion on a last-ditch field goal attempt that would have won the game, they should rightfully have had one more shot at the game-winner, but were denied it through malfeasance on the part of the officiating crew.

The NFL's normal policy whenever one of its game officials blatantly screws up is to issue a vote of confidence, accompanied by a bank of statistics demonstrating that the zebras get it right 99.7 per cent of the time. And, the truth be known, the use of television replay has helped correct what might have been more egregious errors.

Controversy in play-off games is to be expected as well. Football fans continue to debate a reversal of a call in the New England-Oakland play-off game in the snows of Foxboro last January, one which ultimately sent the Patriots to the Super Bowl (which they won) and the Raiders into hibernation for the winter.

The best judgment about that particular episode was that the zebras got it right in the interpretation of the rule, but the rule itself was flawed.

No such gray area existed last Sunday in San Francisco. The officials, particularly back judge Scott Green and side judge Doug Rosenbaum, choked on their whistles.

Any rational attempt to dissect the final play should be prefaced by acknowledging that the Giants have only themselves to blame for first blowing a 24-point lead and then botching the snap on a 41-yard field goal attempt. You can feel sorry for them all you want, in other words, but there ought to be limits on how sorry.

After watching the 49ers come back to take the lead at 39-38 inside the two-minute mark, Kerry Collins and the Giants came storming back down the field, and had advanced to the 24 yard-line with six seconds left to play.

Under normal circumstances a kick of this distance would constitute a perfunctory exercise, but you couldn't blame the Giants if they weren't exactly brimming with confidence as they lined up. Just a few minutes earlier, placekicker Matt Bryant had shanked one from a similar distance, but he had co-conspirators: Doug Allen, the New York punter who holds for placements, had juggled the ball and been slow in getting it into place after a bad snap from Trey Junkin, a 41-year-old veteran who had been coaxed out of retirement just a few days earlier to perform this one, very specific function.

It was third down, so the Giants presumably had one more chance left if something went awry, and it quickly did. Junkin's execrable snap came rolling back across the soggy turf. Realising that he had no chance to get the ball down, Allen instead pulled it up and raced to his right, where he desperately heaved the ball in the general direction of Rich Seubert.

SEUBERT never got a chance to catch it, however. He was dragged down by San Francisco defensive end Chike Okeafor while the ball was still in flight. Since Seubert, though he wears an interior lineman's number, had reported as an eligible receiver, this constituted blatant pass interference, but while three yellow flags went up on the play, none of them were for that infraction.

Rather, a trio of judges had spotted another Giants lineman, Tam Hopkins, illegally downfield on the play. In the chaos that reigned, none of the zebras admitted to having seen Okeafor manhandle Seubert, even though several million television viewers saw exactly that.

Had the play been properly called, the Giants would have had one more shot at the field goal. Considering the way their last two attempts had gone from the same spot, you wouldn't make it a lead-pipe cinch that they'd have made that one, either, but even the NFL now concedes that they at least deserved the chance to try.

Giants coach Jim Fassel was evidently so disgusted by the performance of his troops that he didn't even protest at the time. He did mutter something about hoping that when his players reported for duty next season they still had the dirt from the San Francisco park in their mouths.

Ironically, the "emergency and unfair acts" section of the NFL rules provide a remedy for situations precisely like the one which occurred in San Francisco. The commissioner has the authority to order a replay of a game "either from the beginning or from the point at which the extraordinary act occurred", but the chances of that happening in this case are absolutely zero.

The most obvious objection would come from the television networks, whose post-season schedules are written in stone, but there are other considerations.

"I don't know if you could fairly duplicate the situation? Would you let fans in?" asked Giants vice-president John Mara, who even as a representative of the aggrieved party didn't evince much enthusiasm for reopening this particular can of worms. "I don't know if that would be fair to the 49ers, to go back out there without 65,000 screaming fans. And you might have different weather."

Ironically, Rosenbaum and Green don't normally work together. The officiating assignments for play-off games result in "all-star" crews made up of zebras who graded highest at their positions over the regular season. A further irony is that one or both of them could already have been assigned to work Super Bowl XXXVII in San Diego. We'll find that out two weeks from Sunday.