Replacement official emerges, says he has no regrets

• Official who gave touchdown, and game, to Seattle on disputed catch still says his call was right.
• James Brown credits Lance Easley with coming on the air, says he handled himself well.
• Jerry Jones and Shannon Sharpe disagree on the talents of Dallas quarterback Tony Romo.

The most-famous NFL replacement ref got more famous Sunday.

And only, as Lance Easley said on CBS' NFL studio show, "because you called me, J.B."

That would be CBS' James Brown, who interviewed Easley and asked him what it was like "to be the most vilified man in America." Easley was the replacement ref who signaled touchdown on a last-second Hail Mary that gave Seattle a Monday night win over Green Bay -- a call so controversial it helped expedite the return of the NFL's regular refs.

And no, there was nothing wrong with your TV set if you were tuned in: Easley still thinks his call was right.

But why did Easley, who hadn't previously talked publicly about the call and on-air and now says he'll return to being "private" -- he declined to be interviewed by USA TODAY Sports after his TV appearance Sunday -- talk to CBS?

"All I heard was that we reached out to him and he'd declined, but he was receptive to talking to me," Brown said in a phone interview Sunday. "When I talked to him, he was extremely non-committal, (fearing) that his talking would add to the furor."

Well, yes. Not only does Easley still think he was right, but he wouldn't acknowledge that that there was offensive pass interference -- something even the NFL had conceded -- when the Seattle receiver clearly appeared to shove a defender out of the way to make what Easley saw as a touchdown catch.

Easley maintains it was "hard for me to see pass interference" which he noted is "very rarely called" in Hail Mary situations. And besides, Easley says, it was hard to figure stuff out since the Seattle receiver and Green Bay defender "were wrapped around that thing like a meatball, their arms were like spaghetti" -- and Easley stuck a fork in the NFL's lockout.

Brown said as he was "walking through" a potential interview with Easley, he says what seemed to convince Easley was the idea "it was a chance where he could do himself some good" and that CBS "had no ulterior motives." Brown says Easley did pretty well on-air Sunday: "What was most telling for me was talking to (CBS analyst) Bill Cowher, who disagrees with the call but thinks (Easley) is a standup guy and did himself more good than not."

In the interview, Easley explained his motivation -- "I wanted to come out and let people know I'm OK" -- and that, far from having regrets, he'd become a replacement ref again "in a heartbeat."

We'll never know.

MLB TV box office: New sudden-death playoff games seemed pretty media-genic. So it's not too surprising that ratings for the first two days of TBS' MLB playoff coverage, which began with the first-ever wildcard games, are up. Friday and Saturday game averaged 2.5% of U.S. households -- up 25% from last year's first two days.

But it's not much help that the San Francisco Bay area has two teams that split local viewership, rather than delivering a big local rating. TBS' coverage Saturday of the Athletics-Detroit drew 19.2% of viewers in Detroit and just 7.9% in the San Francisco Bay Area while Cincinnati-Giants drew 17% in the Reds' hometown and 12.6% in the Bay Area.

P.S.: Starting Monday, TBS will add Los Angeles Dodger Shane Victorino to add to his video resume for possible post-retirement TV work when he appears as a guest studio analyst through Wednesday.

Spice rack: After ESPN's Sprint Cup action ended with a final-lap 20-car pileup with Fox announcer and part-time driver Michael Waltrip at its epicenter, Tony Stewart gave a textbook example of how athletes should publicly handle their screwups. On ESPN, he was self-deprecating -- joking he hadn't been hurt in the crash because he's "a finely-tuned athlete" -- and offered a candid confession: "I screwed up. ... I take 100% of the blame." ... On Fox's NFL Atlanta-Washington game Sunday, analyst John Lynch sounded almost like a fan in saying about Washington rookie quarterback Robert Griffin III, "I'm going to buy (his) jersey for my son, although you probably shouldn't say that." But when Griffin was knocked out of the game after a hit by Falcon Sean Witherspoon, Lynch sounded impartial -- saying it was a "legal hit" and "great play" but later amended his assessment to say the play was "a vicious hit." ... Fox's Michael Strahan dressed as a woman, complete with a blonde wig, for a pregame show skit. Really.

Talking baseball: With Oakland-Detroit on Sunday, MLB Network's first-ever playoff game coverage was solid. Jim Kaat, calling his first playoff action since 1995, seemed pretty old school as he talked about fielding percentages and recalled an era with fewer earphones in noting Oakland temporarily taking a lead made Detroit's stadium "as quiet as a crowded elevator." But having the post-season game on MLBN, which reaches about 70 million TV households out of the USA's 115 million total, no doubt sent lots of viewers looking for MLBN is on their dials -- or grumbling if they don't get it. And that, folks, is one reason MLB put playoff action on its own channel. ... With speculation that one of its lead game analysts -- Terry Francona -- might return to managing and ex-ESPN game analyst Bobby Valentine was out as Boston's manager, spokesman Mike Soltys last week said ESPN was "happy" with its current announcers. With Francona confirming on Saturday he'll become Cleveland's manager -- although he'll remain an ESPN analyst through the post-season -- Soltys said "we have not begun to make decisions for 2013.

Irish still sell: Notre Dame football is still a seductive brand. With the 5-0 Irish off to its best start in a decade, NBC's Miami-Irish game Saturday drew a 2.4 overnight rating, translating into 2.4% of households in the 56 urban markets measured for overnights. With NBC's ND ratings already up 26% heading into that game, that 2.4 represents a 100% jump over NBC's comparable coverage of an Air Force-ND game last year. And as the Irish host 17th-ranked Stanford on NBC Saturday, ESPN College GameDay will be staged at No. 7 Notre Dame -- showing again that ESPN will at least occasionally help hype other networks' game -- and NBC, for the first time, will produce its Notre Dame pregame show from South Bend.

Still, the Irish have a way to go to get into the Southeastern Conference's ratings stratosphere. Florida's upset of LSU on Saturday, resulting in the Gators now being ranked No. 6 with the Tigers falling to eighth, produced a 4.7 overnight -- up 42% from comparable coverage of a game between the same teams last year and CBS' best SEC regular-season overnight since a Georgia-Auburn game in 2010.

Clip 'n save: Dallas owner Jerry Jones wants to make quarterback Tony Romo "a Cowboy for life," reports CBS' Jason La Canfora, and wants to give him a new contract "in the coming months." That doesn't seem like a good idea to CBS' Shannon Sharpe: "Fans will have to realize what I already know: (Romo) can't get it done." ... Fox's Terry Bradshaw to Chicago quarterback Jay Cutler: "Grow up, young man." And then maybe you can borrow the car.