Reportedly, the NFL plans to investigate official Ed Hochuli after the veteran referee allegedly told Cam Newton that he wasn’t “old enough” to receive a personal foul call in his favor during Sunday’s Panthers win over New Orleans.

Newton, who is in his fifth year as a starter, has led the Panthers to the playoffs two straight seasons. However, that evidently did not garner enough respect in Hochuli’s eyes:

“I was rolling out trying to string out the play and create some type of opportunity to get a completion and the defensive linemen, you know, kind of hit me. It was close. It was right on the cusp,” Newton said in the postgame press conference. “Was it a late hit? I don’t know, but the response that I got was ‘Cam, you’re not old enough to get that call.'”

Based off of Hochuli’s reported logic, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Peyton Manning, Tony Romo, and Drew Brees are probably the only folks who deserve calls.

Anyhow, Jim Quirk, the Executive Director of the NFL Referees Association, responded to Newton’s possibly damaging allegations.

“Not true. Not even close to being true, said Quirk. Ed is recognized as one of our top-notch game officials who hasn’t gotten to where he is by anything other than being a complete and dedicated professional.”

If found to be true, the NFL will another colossal headache on its hands. You can’t have one of your top officials basically saying that NFL officials play favorites.

After all, that would kind of mean that The Shield™ lacks integrity…and we know all know that just isn’t possible.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bonus points to the Panthers’ Twitter account for trolling the daylights out of Hochuli and the league while referencing the young legs of Newton.