Feb. 17, 2006

Upon Further Review...

By JON MOFFETT
jrm001@marietta.edu

Welcome to the newest addition to the Sports section of the Marcolian. “Upon Further Review” is a new editorial column that will be featured in each of the upcoming issues. It will give students the chance to express their opinions on issues in professional sports. Each issue will bring up a new issue, and each issue will feature a different author. If you’d like to submit an idea for this column, or if you think that you’d like to write about something that pertains to sports. contact Jon Moffett at jrm001@marietta.edu. Enjoy.

It’s official. What exactly is official? The calls made on the football field, the baseball diamond, the basketball court, the boxing ring and every other place else when it comes to sports. That’s what.

There’s a reason why these people are called officials, whether they’re known as referees, umpires or any other name they might have, and that’s because their calls are the final say in the outcomes of these sporting endeavors. In short, they are official.
There has been a lot of debate, discussion and hard feelings when it comes to officials this year, most notably in the NFL. The main problem has been poor officiating and a number of questionable calls in not only regular season, but during playoffs and even the Super Bowl; times when calls are at the utmost of importance.

One of the main complaints around sports deals with the officiating crews; nearly all of them in any sport are part-time. That means when the season is over, these men go on their merry way and do whatever it is they do in the off-season.

The NFL, just one of the leagues where officiating has been sub-par, has continued to discuss the possibility of making their officials full-time employees. If made full-time, those men will be trained year-round in order to cut down the amount of questionable calls made. I have no problem with the NFL wanting to make their officials full-timers. What I do have a problem with is the sudden and disgusting disrespect of that position.

First off, bad calls did NOT determine the outcome of the Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks are Super Losers because they played like losers. The referees didn’t drop countless passes, and they also didn’t miss two key field goals. Add in the fact that Seattle must’ve hired Donovan McNabb as the special guest offensive coordinator for the two-minute drill, and you know exactly why they lost that game.

Sure some of the calls could’ve gone either way, but they didn’t and people need to get over that. Nobody, except for maybe Pittsburgh linebacker Joey Porter, was out to get the Seahawks. Bad calls or not, it wasn’t the men in the striped shirts that cost the Seahawks the game. It was the men in those nasty metallic gray shirts.

Football isn’t the only sport that’s been under the gun when it comes to questionable calls though. Major League Baseball had its share of problems with its officiating this year as well.

Once again, the errors, no pun intended, carried over from the regular season and into the playoffs. There were several key calls that could have gone either way, but since there is currently no instant replay option for coaches and umpires, the calls were made instinctively. Even after all of these questionable calls were made, I didn’t hear anyone say that the umpires were the reason that the White Sox won the World Series.

Maybe that’s because unlike baseball, football has the option of instant replay. And nine times out of ten, the bad calls are overturned. But that doesn’t help judgment calls, which are not reviewable.

Face it people, no matter what you do there are going to be bad calls in games. Officials are only human, and humans make mistakes. People need to stop complaining. Just because your team is losing, and being Cleveland Browns and Oakland Raiders fans I can assure you I know what it’s like to lose, doesn’t mean that the calls are bogus.

Referees, umpires, and the like are simply unbiased members of the sport of which they represent. There is no conspiracy, just imperfect men and women doing their jobs to the best of their ability.

I think that baseball should finally institute instant replay; it doesn’t take any credibility from the game as some people like to think, but that’s another argument. Sports, just like everything else, are not perfect. They are however fun to watch and participate in.

Last time I checked, no one played or watched games because they wanted to make sure the officials made the correct calls. So just enjoy the game for what it is.