NOLA still up in arms

NEW ORLEANS — Digital signs over local highways this morning blared the allcaps message, “WE WERE ROBBED.”

The front-page banner headline in the Times-Picayune: “REFFING UNBELIEVABLE.” Right, the R is silent.

And an eyecare practice in nearby Covington, La., on Twitter offered free exams to any NFL officials.

“After having time to consider things,” the Louisiana Family Eyecare clinic tweeted Sunday evening, “we will GLADLY provide no cost to eye exams to all NFL officials prior to next season to prevent the atrocity that occurred tonight. We would hate for someone else to feel our pain.”

That about sums up the tenor of the locals, after their beloved New Orleans Saints were robbed by no call of obvious pass interference by a Los Angeles Rams defender near the end of regulation in the Rams’ overtime win Sunday afternoon in the NFC championship game.

Husbands were still grumbling to wives over breakfast Monday. Radio hosts were still up in arms.

And many remained spitting mad about what they allege is a continuing NFL conspiracy against their club, which began with commissioner Roger Goodell’s heavy-handed punishments that he handed down following the 2009-12 Bountygate scandal.

The irony is that in one wing of the press box on Sunday, several members of a group of over-excited Rams employees watching the game continually complained long, loud and frequently about how Bill Vinovich’s officiating crew, once again in a big game, was trying to screw the Rams over.