Ed Hochuli screwed up and he's sorry about it. He has been accountable and he has been apologetic. He has answered the e-mails of aggrieved San Diego Chargers fans, and has succeeded in turning some of their scorn into sympathy.

Rather than make an excuse, Hochuli has set an example. He has said his call is responsible for the Chargers' 39-38 loss Sunday to the Denver Broncos at Invesco Field.

The NFL's most muscular referee cannot undo the decisive error he made S in Denver, but he has handled the fallout with such candor and contrition that his crisis management should be taught in our classrooms.

He has told the truth, even though it's embarrassing. He has taken responsibility, even though his job could be in jeopardy. He has done what many of us preach but fail to practice.

Maybe he did not have much choice in the matter, but Ed Hochuli has taken the high road at the lowest point of his officiating career.

"Affecting the outcome of a game is a devastating feeling," the 57-year-old official wrote to several readers who shared his correspondence. "Officials strive for perfection - I failed miserably."

My Latin is a little rusty, but that sure sounds like a mea maximum culpa. That sure sounds like a man who is taking this whole thing even harder than Chargers head coach Norv Turner.

Put yourself in Ed Hochuli's place and you'd immediately want out.

When you take a step back from the searing heat of the moment, Hochuli is more easily seen as a victim than a villain. He made a split-second mistake that the rules made impossible to rectify, and that mistake will forever define him in the minds of many football fans.

The Chargers lost a game to the Denver Broncos as the direct result of Hochuli's error, but how much higher a price is a man's peace of mind? How many of us don't harbor some lasting regret over a momentary, unintentional lapse that can't be corrected? Who among us has not failed in the pursuit of perfection?

I'd ask for a show of hands, but Jesus Christ is not a subscriber.

Why is it, then, that so many of us react so harshly when a fellow human demonstrates his fallibility? Why do so many spectators leap to slanderous conclusions or imagine complex conspiracies in the absence of hard evidence? When did the benefit of the doubt begin losing the American mind to hyperbolic hysteria?

Granted, it's hard to find a representative sample when you're writing a sports column or tuned to talk radio. You tend to hear from the people with the most extreme points of view, the biggest bets on the line and/or the most time on their hands. Listen to them vent long enough and you could easily be convinced that on any given Sunday, America is an angry mob.

Yet the same stridency seems to permeate much of contemporary culture and nearly all of contemporary politics.

Reasoned debate makes for poor programming, so television thrives on conflict. Politics have become so partisan and so petty that slogans substitute for substance. Like the denizens of Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities," the noisiest authorities on the modern sports scene insist on events being portrayed, "for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

One of the e-mail messages received here referred to Hochuli as "a disgrace to football," who "has no merit to ever officiate a game again." Another reader suggested Hochuli "should probably hire a personal bodyguard." Another intimated an integrity issue: "It would appear to me that the NFL has a Tim Donaghy problem just waiting to blow up in its face." Donaghy is the National Basketball Association referee accused of betting on NBA games.

Several messages were simply too coarse to be published in these pages.

To officiate professional sports in this environment is to encounter mindless hostility. To make a mistake is to invite careless charges of corruption. To admit to that mistake, and to the torment it has caused, is not something you expect of a seasoned lawyer.

"A trial is nothing, pressurewise, compared to the NFL," Hochuli said in a 2007 interview with USA Today . "I have that long (snapping his fingers) to make a decision with a million people watching and second-guessing in slow-motion. You've got to be right or wrong.

"I love the satisfaction when you are right — and the agony when you are wrong."

So maybe he's a masochist. Maybe all officials are masochists.

"No one feels worse about this than Ed, but like the coaches and players in our high-speed game, mistakes will occur," said Tim Mills, executive director of the NFL Referees Association.

"The NFLRA stands by Ed Hochuli as a 19-year veteran with multiple Super Bowl and countless playoff game experience who has the integrity and character to admit a mistake and accept the criticism that comes with it."

Ed Hochuli has made a mistake fate won't let him fix. He is to be pitied, not pilloried.

Tim Sullivan writes about sports at the San Diego Union-Tribune. Reach him at tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.