I don’t watch a lot of sports but in order to keep my Canadian card I have to watch a minimum amount of hockey, so I’m filling part of my quota tonight.
When a referee miss a penalty that seems clear afterwards do they maybe call a penalty when something happens later that maybe, kind of, sort of could be a penalty?
And vice versa, if they call a penalty and then think that maybe the player was just diving do they give the wronged team a freebie (not obviously for something blatant, but for something on the edge)?
Edit: Darn it I meant for this to be in “The Game Room” can a mod move it please? Thanks!
It would seem highly unprofessional to me to do so. If they thought the previous call were wrong, they wouldn’t have made it, and if something caused them to change their mind, they’d reverse it. If a call is really close to the borderline… well, that’s why we have referees: Their job is to decide which side of the line it’s on, and to turn an ambiguous situation unambiguous.
NHL referees totally even up their calls, especially in playoff overtime when the stakes are so high. Yes, it’s horribly unprofessional and very nearly destroyed the game in the late 90s and early 2000s when teams started gaming this – the sport became an arms race where the team that managed to get away with the most fouls on defense would have a big advantage. The NHL managed to correct the problem for a few years but it’s been creeping back for years now and it’s been especially noticeable to me in this year’s playoffs.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with officials attempting to be consistent and fair in their calls. That’s not the same thing as turning a blind eye to an infraction to even things up, but it may be mistaken for that if they are just adjusting the way they call a game. I’m also sure some officials do go over the line to even up the effect on the game either consciously or unconsciously but proving it will be quite difficult.
I used to be a professional referee in that I got paid to officiate, but not at the professional sport level. There is a strong desire among referees to “even up” missed calls in the interest of ‘fairness’, but the problem with that is it’s patently unfair either to overlook an infraction or impose a penalty where no actual infraction exists. In other words, two wrongs (by the referee) don’t make a right. The governing body of my particular sport regularly monitored referee performance, and strongly advised referees to call each game, each play, and each incident as they saw it and on it’s own particular merits. The hope, of course, is that the missed calls would even themselves out over the course of the game.
The best result is that no matter what the outcome of the game, both teams feel like the referee called it evenly. Almost as good in the referee’s mind, however, is where both teams equally feel they got shafted by the referee.
I don’t know if this happens in other leagues, but AIUI in the NFL, referees get graded by the league after each game. Make enough bad calls and not only are you not going to get selected for the higher-profile games like playoffs or Super Bowl, but you might actually be out of a job altogether.
That should, in theory, reduce the incentive to give a questionable make-up call to one team that you just shafted earlier. That will just get you graded twice as severely the next morning by the league review office, for making 2 errors instead of 1.
Rysto is exactly correct. Hockey referees do try to even things up, although I personally think it’s getting better over the years.
The fact is though that egregious penalties in the NHL are also on a major decline. With the current collective bargaining agreement, and salary cap, teams cannot afford a player who is simply an “enforcer.” That position is long gone, penalties are declining and referees are calling things the way they see it. But I’m sure the old “evening thing up” bias still exists.
An example is a baseball umpire who consistently calls inside pitches as strikes or a football referee who calls the slightest contact pass interference. As long as it’s being called the same way to both teams it’s hard to call the officiating unfair even if it’s unorthodox. Many of those calls are subjective and open to the officials’ judgment so it’s not even like they’re breaking the rules.
Good team staff will even research how an official typically runs a game and plan accordingly; one game they’ll play it safe to avoid fouls while the next game they play aggressively because they can get away with more. That’s part of the preparation and strategy.
As a former umpire, No. Every call is made on its own merits, in a vacuum. However, it would be human nature if, instead of “the tie goes to the runner”, award a tie to a team against which I had previously blown a call. And believe me, you DO remember, vividly, every blown call.
However, baseballl has the unique property of an absence of “no calls”, and most of what would be “balancing” in any other sport would be a call versus a no-call. I would expect a stronger inclination there to try to balance borderline calls.
That’s what makes baseball the perfect game. When the ball is pitched or batted, the ump can’t just turn his back and say he didn’t see it so it didn’t happen.
This is correct. The players don’t really care if the ump has a wide strike zone or a narrow one, etc., as long as they know it will be that same strike zone throughout the game. They can adjust their pitching or hitting accordingly. The only thing they care about is that it is realistic.
For example, an ump might have a tight strike zone (throw it into a hat) and be known as a “hitter’s umpire”. The one that will get objections is an ump whose strike zone is excessively wide (dugout to dugout ). They are known as “pitcher’s umpires” and they cause problems. If they call a pitch a strike when it hits the inside line of the opposite batter’s box, that’s not realistic. The batter can’t reach that far with the bat without stepping out of the box. It’s usually a problem with rookie umps and they tend to tighten up the zone with experience.
I wonder if subconsciously they may be evening things up by trying to be more consistent after complaints. If the ump calls a strike that seems kind of low will they keep consistently calling strikes that low or actually narrow the strike zone and end up calling more strikes? Calling balls and strikes is very tough though, in football it’s more a matter of whether or not you will throw a flag on close calls. It looks very much like football referees adjust their calls in a game, not necessarily a tit-for-tat, but changing the way they call the rest of the game.
My impression, as a casual hockey fan, is that NHL officials have a tendency to even things up for fouls even if they thought the previous call was right; you almost never see a team get three power plays in a row (which should happen a quarter of the time if fouls were randomly distributed).
And of course the NBA doesn’t really deny that at times whether a foul is called or not is based on things like whether the foulee is a big star or a rookie, whether there’s a previous bad call that is being made up, or whether the putative fouler did something to piss off the referee.
But I think even for sports and leagues that really are consistently and honestly committed to absolutely even officiating, there’s a tension for good referees between calling each play as you see it, and ensuring that the game keeps flowing. Even without tilting to one side or another in any way, you often have to adjust how you call a game based on what the players are doing: if both teams are very physical (and both seem OK with it), you might let a few more things go. Or if there’s a particularly hard foul and/or rising tension for other reasons, you might tighten things up for a bit to make sure things don’t escalate. And the same concerns can apply to make up calls. I saw a discussion on another board recently, by a paid (if not full-time professional) referee who was discussing how to deal with a situation where, as a referee, you’ve called five fouls in a row on the same team. His answer was that you generally have to find a foul to call against the other team, just to keep the players on the first team from feeling like they’re getting screwed and having the game become about that.
Again, it’s a balance. Too far to ‘game management’ and you’re an NBA ref, calling retaliatory fouls on players who’ve complained about a previous call; too far to robotic call it as you see it, and you’ll have some out of control games.
Calls should be robotic. If a game ends 8-0, oh well.
I’m not entirely convinced that hockey penalties are evened up. It’s true you’d see more three-in-a-row power plays if they were randomly distributed, but
Well… is is true that doesn’t happen? It just happened yesterday, actually. In both games, in fact. And it happened the day before… twice.
If it in fact doesn’t happen that often, which I am not convinced of, that doesn’t prove the refs are balancing things. That could happen simply because a team that has faced two power plays is reducing their level of physical contact a bit because they’re worried about getting another.
Simple example from college basketball: By the rules, a player who racks up 5 personal fouls is out of the game. In practice, though, the limit is 4: If a player gets that many personal fouls, then their own team will pull them, because they don’t want them to keep on fouling, and (if it’s an otherwise good player) might need to put him back in at a critical moment.
I think makeup calls as an intentional, specific choice are incredibly rare to nonexistent. But referees are still people making split-second decisions, and people making split-second decisions are subject to dozens of influences, many of them operating below the level of conscious thought. A ref who knows from glancing at the big screen that he blew the previous close call might not deliberately throw the next close call to the other side… but it certainly might influence his thinking and lead to that outcome anyway.
). They are known as “pitcher’s umpires” and they cause problems. If they call a pitch a strike when it hits the inside line of the opposite batter’s box, that’s not realistic. The batter can’t reach that far with the bat without stepping out of the box. It’s usually a problem with rookie umps and they tend to tighten up the zone with experience.