I know that any physical contact is out of the question in any sport that I know.
Do they regularly get sworn at by players? Coaches?
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of misconduct penalties in any of the sports I watch but I just watched Sidney Crosby jaw at a referee because of call he didn’t like. I wonder what he was saying.
I don’t know about other sports, but in baseball a player, manager or coach will be ejected for any personal insult. It doesn’t have to involve cursing. You can also get thrown out for “showing up” an umpire - for example, if you draw a line in the dirt where you claim a pitch went, the umpire will toss you immediately. You can get thrown out for arguing ball and strike calls even if you’re not obnoxious about it. You can also get ejected for arguing too long - the umpire will give you a warning, and if you keep it up you get tossed.
My impression is that replay review has reduced the amount of abuse that umpires take. If a manager thinks an umpire made a bad call, he’ll ask for it to be reviewed rather than scream at the umpire.
Since this is about sports, let’s move to the Game Room from General Questions.
samclem, moderator
Don’t call the ump a cocksucker. [NSFW: language]
Football refs used to get dogs abuse from the players - surrounding the ref and literally screaming at him (An image search for Roy Keane Andy D’Urso will show a particularly egregious example).
Incidents like this brought the issue to crisis point and things are now a lot better IMO - basically the growth of the EPL as a global commodity in the last ten years has led to a clean-up and you don’t see such blatant abuse v often.
Images like the one referred to above, though, are quite indelible in the public mind - I think people in the UK who don’t follow football would still assume that refs get terrible abuse from players and that football refereeing is broken in this regard.
That was a TERRIBLE CALL! I can’t believe you called it that way! Are you BLIND! My DOG could moderate better than that!
C’mon, somebody had to do it.
In other words …
On the internet, nobody knows your moderator is a dog?? 
I remember seeing a Colorado Rockies game when Larry Walker was their right fielder. He was at bat and had two strikes on him. He looked at a pitch that the umpire called strike three and started to argue. The ump tossed him out of the game. After he went back to the dugout, I saw a whole tub of bubblegum come flying out onto the field. There was bubblegum all over the ground along the foul line. It was epic.
New Jersey Devils head coach Jim Schoenfeld and referee Don Koharski got into it pretty hot and heavy in the tunnel after a playoff game in 1988, during which Schoenfeld called Koharski a “fat pig” and infamously told him to “have another donut!”
That lead to Schoenfeld being suspended for the next game, the Devils getting a court injunction against the NHL that allowed Schoenfeld to coach, a walk out by all the refs in retaliation, and the rounding up of scab refs, all of which happened in a matter of hours before the game began.
Rugby referees have a low tolerance for abuse.
Call one a cheat? That’s the end of the game for you son..
Appeal to loudly for an infraction? The referee will inform you that he’s the boss and this isn’t soccer..
Push the ref out of the referee when defending your goaline? Take a five week holiday.
In most cases, the officials and players both know that the officials will make mistakes - that’s why, in a lot of sports, some calls can be overturned from the replay booth. However, the officials, in the backs of their minds, realize that they don’t want to be the ones that decide the game because they might have been a little too quick on the whistle in removing someone from the game. There’s a mentality in pro sports, at least in the USA: “let the players decide it on the field.” (This is why you rarely see a non-blatant penalty called in overtime in the Stanley Cup Finals, or game 7 of the playoffs.)
Mario Lemieux attacks Kerry Fraser
NHL refs seem to have to put up with a lot of bitching.
Ah, the good old days, when referees wore their names on their jerseys and you knew who to direct your dissatisfaction to.
“Ref you suck!” chants are so impersonal.
Did Dylan Hartley actually call the ref sir in that clip? I’d heard that union players did this but thought it was a piss-take.
Union is a rare example of a sport where the balance is way out of line the other way - authority fetishising that gives the ref excessive influence. It seems plenty of Union refs are all to happy to be the centre of attention - which given the highly interpretive nature of the rules, is not something to be celebrated.