SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Carey hears your jokes about his accuracy, America, and he wants you to know you’re wrong.
The embattled CBS Sports NFL officiating analyst, who is seemingly wrong so often that it has become a running joke on social media, fired back at his critics Monday and claims the numbers back him up.
Carey, a former longtime NFL referee, told The Post that CBS’ internal numbers show his opinion of calls is in sync with final decisions rendered by the league’s NFL replay review crew in New York 90 percent of the time.
“I don’t read that much of [the criticism], so what I think what I hear more than anything is that I’m always wrong,” Carey said at CBS Sports’ Super Bowl 50 news conference. “You tell me: Is that fair? I don’t think it matches the statistics.”
The perception is so strong, though, that online bookmaker Bovada even has a Super Bowl prop bet that Carey will be wrong about a challenge to a call in Sunday’s game between the Panthers and Broncos. The current odds are 11-to-10 that he will and 2-to-3 that he will not.
Carey’s reaction comes on the heels of CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus defending Carey in an interview last week.
“I’ve seen some of the criticism, and some of it is very hurtful, quite frankly,” CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus told USA Today. “It’s funny, the vast majority of the calls that Mike has made have been correct. I sit there on Sunday afternoon, and he’ll do sometimes, a dozen different cut-ins to our various regional games, and he’s almost always right.”
Carey said Monday that he welcomed McManus’ comments.
“It’s nice to see that he has support for me,” Carey told The Post.
Asked how aware he was of the criticism directed at him on social media, Carey smiled.
“I don’t live in a vacuum, so I’m aware of it,” he said. “Everybody’s got an opinion.”