Officiating Is Not a Conspiracy
It’s time — past time — for sports fans to come to grips with a fact: the officials are not out to get us.
They make plenty of mistakes. They miss things that happen and catch things that don’t. They are imperfect, but that’s the word. Imperfect. Not aligned to a scheme or predisposed to ruin your day. Not corrupt or evil. They’re a bunch of dudes who have a pretty difficult job and don’t always do it to perfection. Not more, not less.
It’s getting hard to throw a stone at sports talk (radio, online, wherever) and not hit someone placing blame for their team’s failure on a bad call here or there. Enough.
The absence of a blown calls database means there’s no way to measure this, but there is no hard evidence that any one team — in any sport — consistently comes out ahead in penalties, fouls, etc. It’s nice sometimes to think that it happens because it helps salve the wounds of defeat, but indulging the fantasy doesn’t make it real.
Just for the sake of argument, though, let’s say that some teams do enjoy a favorable position. Let’s say the Yankees or Patriots or Steelers or Lakers really do get more calls. Let’s say the officials and the leagues have clandestine meetings during which they discuss the need to feed these (and other) teams an advantage. Let us say that’s true. Some folks seem to believe it so we can go from there.
It doesn’t change what really matters: if one team beats another because of a bad call then the team on the shit end of that stick didn’t do enough to win. You enter the game, or the series, knowing there will be bad calls. Some will go your way and some won’t. You know you will get a raw deal now and then. If you let the game fall into the hands of the officials then you didn’t do enough to win.
Let’s put a fine point on it and take a look at the Orioles and the Jeffrey Maier game. I’ll join any chorus singing the indignity of that call. It was horrible. One of the worst in postseason baseball history, in fact.
But you know what? That call didn’t decide the game and it didn’t decide the series (even though it hurts to type those words). It happened in game one and didn’t even result in a game-winning RBI (it tied the game at 4). The Yankees went on to win both the game and the series, but the Orioles had plenty of chances to do likewise. They didn’t. I hate that fact and I hate Jeffrey Maier and I hate the Yankees, but one bad call didn’t write the final line of that ‘96 season. Tempting though it is to remember otherwise.
Think of how many games you’ve watched or seen recapped on ESPN or elsewhere and then consider how many stick out as having been flipped by officiating. You might remember a handful of the bad ones, right? That number pales in comparison to all of the games you’ve encountered that played out more or less the way they should.
Officiating is a variable — much like field conditions and weather, crowd noise, and travel schedules. These things have an effect, but rarely is it decisive. Good teams overcome it, bad teams blame it.
I think, all along, what really, really stung about the Jeff Maier thing (and on a side note I am ready to put this fucking thing to fucking bed forever, because just bringing up his fucking name everytime a call needs to go to replay is getting realy fucking old. And yes, I still have the contigency plan in my back pocket: if I am unemployed come March, I’m gonna go find him and burn his house down just to make myself feel better*) is that a) we don’t know if it decided the game, because it gave the Yankees runs they didn’t deserve, but more than that b) the whole thing was treated like proof that God exists and he loves the Yankees in New York. Maier got the key to the city for chrissakes! The umpire was out there signing autographs the next day! Even if it wasn’t a conspiracy (it wasn’t), everything gave the appearance that it was, and that everybody was THRILLED that it was pulled off so perfectly. And that was what really, really stung.
*I don’t advocate house burning**
**Unless it’s Jeff Maier’s house***
***kidding!!****
****…?
I’m just gonna say Game Four of the 2007 NBA Western Conference Finals and uh… Tim Donaghy.
Haha I knew someone would bring up Donaghy.
Look, one corrupt ref might suggest the existence of more, I’ll grant you that. But in order to use him to refute what I’ve said in this post you’d have to be claiming that one Tim Donaghy equals evidence of a widespread conspiracy, spread across multiple leagues and sports, that somehow nobody has managed to uncover all these years.
Sorry, man, but that’s ridiculous.
No no, not trying to invalidate your claim. I’m just still bitter about that game, and felt the need to bring it up in this post — what with being the only Suns fan living in Baltimore.
I agree, Neal. In fact, I think the key to your entire post is the last line. Good teams overcome it, bad teams blame it. I don’t think the Ravens are a bad team (perhaps not as good as I’d hoped, but not bad), but I think the Baltimore fans in general tend to look for someone to blame. It’s the inferiority complex, plain and simple. The Colts left, the Orioles suck, people are out to get us.
I’m so tired of hearing Ravens fans blame this season on the refs. It is defeatist loser talk. People choose to look at a few bad calls instead of the truth.
i’ll try to find the stats a sun columnist requested from the nfl last week regarding team penalties league wide. it was a breakdown of how many had been called, accepted, and how and when they hurt the team in terms of timing (late in fourth quarter etc) and which were of the cheap variety (illegal contact, etc).
the ravens were far out in first place in all categories, and the numbers spiked after they were critical of the officials a month ago with no punishment from the nfl.
as a steeler/yankee/laker fan i would think the status quo is completely awesome as well.
also harbaugh is a guy whose pedigree reads like a thoroughbread’s in regards to preaching discipline. the fact that he’s exploded at them in a few games is very telling.
sucks that the ravens have to overcome all of that.
pretty sure most of it is makeup calls for that ray lewis thing in atlanta.
i did find an interesting article about officials specifically targeting ravens that go after ben roethlisberger:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-120099451.html
I knew it! I knew you were Jack Nicholson all along! I loved you in…uh…erh….Bat…man?
Also you’re a total fucking tool, Mr. Nicholson.
i don’t get it
just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you
The Status Quo IS awesome: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP6RzRfVlpA
the league’s most aggressive team has 1/4 the penalties of their opponent at halftime whaddaya know!!!
OMGNEALMOVETOANEWSERVER
@dan the man – I know, man. I’m working on it. The good news is that we’re up most of the time now, but I realize that it’s still not perfect. Unfortunately there’s no quick fix.