South Park has never seen a national controversy it didn't mock.
Taking advantage of their ability to quickly turn around and make comedic hay out of the most topical issues of the day, the show's brain trust of Trey Parker and Matt Stone couldn't resist poking fun at the NFL's replacement referees just days after the scabs made what's now one of the most notorious calls in pro football history.
Wednesday night's premiere of the second half of South Park's 16th season finds Stan's dad, Randy Marsh, bemoaning the league's new safety rules to reduce concussions and ultimately offering up his own sarcastic—and softer—version of the game called "Sarcastaball," in which the players wear bras and tinfoil hats and hand off a balloon to each other instead of a pigskin.
Sarcastaball becomes a sensation (not unlike Trey and Matt's movie BASEketball?), and the NFL embraces Randy's ridiculous rules.
Naturally, given what happened on Monday Night Football when the Seattle Seahawks ended up stealing winning the game over the Green Bay Packers when two replacement refs issued a confused and contradictory ruling on a final Hail Mary pass, Parker and Stone incorporated a scene parodying that fiasco.
In the clip, the Pittsburgh Steelers kick off to the Denver Broncos; Peyton Manning receives the balloon and walks it down the length of the field, talking to the opposing team's players along the way. When he gets to the end zone, one official signals a touchdown while the other indicates a safety.
"Oh yeah, nice going, replacement refs," yells Marsh, now the coach of the Broncos.
The two refs subsequently call both holding and intentional grounding. When the play goes to the instant-replay official, after studying it he hilariously declares, "F--k it, it's a f--king field goal."
"Yeah!" cries Randy, pumping his fists just like Seattle coach Pete Carroll did on MNF after the Seahawks' unexpected victory.
The episode also made hilarious sport of Cee Lo Green, as a cartoon version of him sang the national anthem—badly.
Oh, South Park, how we love you.