Officiating in Sports

NBA: Joey Crawford

BPL: Howard Webb

This post is more of an observation on a great debate going on across major sports right now in one form or another. This is the role of officiating in games/matches. In each sport, there has been cries for more technology, more replays, etc. At the surface, I am in complete agreement with this. People don't want to get slighted in major competitions by a sudden (or sometimes consistent) incompetence of an official. No-one want to miss becoming division champs because of a bad call or get to a final game only to feel like the match was given to the other team.

Each league has its examples of refs that will make the headlines. In the NBA, there is Joey Crawford. This is a man that is able to even evoke the wrath of Tim Duncan (which is quite hard to do). In the Premier League, there is Howard Webb who many think is really a Manchester player in disguise. NFL had the replacement refs most recently (though that was to different circumstances). Funny enough, people complained about those refs but when the regular ones came back the complaints did not cease.

But then after hearing the point of view of former players and coaches in each league, some of them are actually proponents of leaving things the way they are. They don't want goal line technology or replays on demand. Initially, I thought this was them being stubborn but then it started occurring to me that they actually have a point. If you think of sports as source of entertainment, then allowing many decisions to fall on the human refs keeps a factor that could be missed if everything was enforced by technology. Think of how many games are infamous and talked about years or decades later because of mishaps or things not caught at the time by the officials. Without this aspect, people would not have much to talk about and there would not be as many memorable competitions. It may be nice to say "every time we lost it was because we were the worst team" but fans may get tired of continually saying that. It injects a little something, gives some teams a little hope when there is the officiating factor.

Now I'm not saying refs should come in untrained and with biases, but if they know the rules and are making the effort to have an even fair match then maybe from an entertainment standpoint that is enough. If anyone has comments on this, feel free to comment below.

Daniel

NFL: Replacement refs