Is football just really hard to officiate?

The Game Room
1

So I’m doing a bit of this and and a bit of that, and I randomly tune in to the Titans/Texans game just before halftime. Not a minute passes before I see a replay of a Titan land a vicious helmet-to-helmet hit on the Texans’ quarterback while he’s on the ground (and had just slid).

No flag. A hit that the league made a rule specifically forbidding not too long ago due to concerns about concussions. Nothing.

And just then it occurs to me just how often these incredibly glaring non-calls happen in football; there’s practically one every week. It’s so pervasive that Urinating Tree made up a term for it, “refball”.

I’m unaware of any other sport where these huge lapses occur on a regular basis. We joke about blind umpires in baseball, but the fact is, they’re on the mark much of the time. Whenever an ump wrongly declares a home run after missing fan interference, blows an obvious safe/out call, or screws up an infield fly ruling, ESPN pounces on it like a cat on a mouse; that this is a rare occurrence, especially given the number of games in a season, proves to me that they’re doing all right. Baseball has also adopted replay technology, and unlike football it’s been accepted with pretty much zero fuss. Of course players rail about strike and ball calls all the time, but that part of the game is meant to be subjective…otherwise why not just use sensors?..and hardly a mark of incompetence. The thing I see argued about the most in hockey is whether this or that penalty should be a major, and again, that’s subjective and we’ll never get 100% agreement on anything. Truly egregious calls are practically the stuff of legend…"The puck was in the net!..and I never hear things like “robbery” or “fix”. Basketball, well, it’s crooked; this been common knowledge for years. The refs aren’t just biased, they’re specifically instructed to be biased. Furthermore, the rules are so nebulous on so many things…blocking/charging, illegal defense, flagrant fouls…that pretty much any call can be considered “good” or “bad”. Soccer, well, that one’s usually a mixed bag, although they are pretty harsh about “simulation”, so I guess that’s a plus.

So is the problem simply that football is just too difficult to officiate properly? Think about it. A baseball umpire only has to watch two players at any one time, there aren’t a whole of of infractions, there’s usually only two or three people in motion for any particular play, and he’s almost always in the exact right position to call safe or out. (I think that’s why most of the screwups I’ve seen were home run and foul calls.) A basketball referee, while he has to do a lot of running, has only 10 players to watch on a relatively small playing surface. Football has 22 positions, each of which can and cannot do certain things and all of whom are in motion and involved in the play at the same time, a large field, and a huge gamut of penalties (especially now with the emphasis on player safety). A missed helmet-to-helmet or pass interference may seem incredibly glaring to us, but we’re watching a close-up replay with two players. The ref has to see an entire section of the field, and remember all the things that are penalties, and, oh yeah, avoid getting run over by a full complement of players who often move unpredictably.

We sometimes argue about what can be done to improve the level of officiating in football, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s possible. You can drill, school, scold, cajole, and review all you want, but it’s not going to make keeping up with 22 powerful, fast-moving athletes any simpler. If there was a way, I’m pretty sure someone would have implemented it by now.

2

Every sport is hard to officiate, and the number of moving parts happening at once in the NFL is a lot more difficult to see everything that’s happening on the field at once. The responsibilities of each official changes based on whether it’s a passing play, a running play, or a special teams play, and some officials, like the umpire, is essentially watching up to ten players for holding and blocking infractions. There’s usually no single angle that will give a single person an angle on all the possible interactions between defensive and offensive line, which is why you could probably show some uncalled line infraction every single play if you wanted to and had enough cameras trained on the field.

In this particular case, however, there’s really no excuse. The most senior official on the field is essentially designated with solely watching what’s happening to the quarterback the entire time the QB might be involved in the play. This wasn’t even a case with a really late hit on a passing play where the ref’s attention might have wandered up to where the action was.

A resource on NFL officiating responsibilities: Officials' Responsibilities & Positions | NFL Football Operations

3

I think it’s probably likely that it’s more difficult to keep track of ALL the things that could be infractions on a US football field- each play has the officiating crew looking at stuff before the play (valid formation, too many men, false start, offsides, delay of game), at the snap (illegal motion, bad snap), during the play itself (ineligible receiver downfield, pass interference, holding, chop blocks, illegal hands to face, personal fouls of various sorts, etc…) as well as trying to keep up with all the various esoterica of the actual rules of play- did the ball cross the line? Was his knee down? Was he touched (pro) after being down? Did he have control of the ball? Was it a fumble or pass? Was it targeting or just a hard hit? Was there a fair catch? Was he out of bounds? There’s a lot of away-from-the-ball stuff that football refs have to be concerned with, as well as a lot of play-related stuff as well.

I’m not surprised that enforcement seems kind of capricious- even with seven members of the officiating crew, it’s hard for them to catch everything every play. If anything, I’m surprised that it’s as consistent as it is; as it is, they get it substantially right an overwhelming amount of the time, and there are only a handful of really questionable or egregiously bad calls per season.

Contrast this with say… a basketball or soccer ref, where there aren’t so many rules or even activity away from the action with the ball- if there is, it’s usually some sort of conflict between players that draws attention to itself naturally. Baseball is similar- there’s not any real oversight of the outfielders during the game- what can they really do to break the rules when they’re away from the ball? Or for that matter, when they’re making a play?

4

I agree all sports are hard to officiate but the one exception is the umpire calling balls and strikes. To me that is much easier because the players are not moving around. Only the ball moves.

5

The sheer number of people on the field, all moving, most of whom are in contact with members of the opposing team increase the difficulty by orders of magnitude.

6

BB and hockey have fast moving action but there are less players. For many years the NHL only had 1 ref who could call penalties but now they have 2. Also BB went from 2 refs to 3 a while back.

7

The other thing to remember is you’re watching a slow-speed replay while the refs are making calls in real time. There have been plenty of flags for helmet-to-helmet hits, that look like penalties in real time, but when you slow down you can see they aren’t.

8

Cricket is pretty damn hard.
Just look up the LBW rule.

9

I think that, not only is football hard to officiate, but at least in the NFL, it’s grown substantially harder over the past few years.

Rule changes that the NFL has instituted in the name of player safety, as well as the convoluted (and regularly changing) rules on what constitutes a catch, are things that are, IMO, easy for the Competition Committee to write, but increasingly difficult for the officials to see, interpret, and enforce on the field in real time.

In addition, the league gives officials specific instruction on rules which they need to be particularly cognizant of enforcing (such as the rules about how quarterbacks may and may not be hit, and when), and I suspect that that focus causes even skilled professional officials to miss other things, as a result.

10

Football is harder than most. Hockey is pretty hard also, the game is a lot faster and more continuous, and the refs take more bumps. I can’t think of another sport offhand where the refs need to be as fit as in hockey, maybe soccer is close.

11

I like it when they try to determine whether a player “made a football move.” As opposed to, maybe, a ping-pong move?

12

You’re correct, it’s not hard. It’s impossible. The ball moves faster than the human eye.

Luckily they approved tracking balls and strikes electronically in the near future so this shouldn’t be an issue.

13

NFL refs are not full time, they mostly have a regular job 9-5 on weekdays. They have talked about upping the pay to make them full time but it has not happened. NFL could easily afford that.

14

They could, but from what I read, it would also cause them to lose a number of their better officials, who have full-time jobs outside of officiating that they like (and which may also be lucrative) – if they forced officials to become full-time, those officials would choose their other jobs over officiating.

Also, IMO, it’s not that the officials are part-time that makes the officiating in the NFL problematic these days – it’s a rulebook that can’t be officiated accurately and fully in real time on the field.

15

Which explains why no one can ever hit or catch it?

16

I think the 3rd-down pass play by Seattle at the end of the game last night demonstrates why it’s so hard - there’s just a ton of subjectivity in most calls, to an extent that isn’t seen in other sports other than basketball.

The SVP of officiating for the NFL said of the play above: “We see the offensive player come in and initiate contact on the defensive player - nothing that rises to the level of a foul which significantly hinders the defender, nothing that is clear and obvious through visual evidence, which hinders the defender. The defender then braces himself. And there is contact then by the defender on the receiver. Again, nothing which rises to the level of a foul based on visual evidence.” Depending on their subjective interpretation of the rule and what happened on the field, this play could have been offensive interference, defensive interference, or no call.

17

Having been a football official at the high school level, I’d say yeah, it’s pretty hard. I found basketball much harder, but I have a much more intimate knowledge of football. Beside being a lifelong fan of the sport, my father was an official for decades.

I also have experience with video. I think their could be MUCH better use of instantly available slow-motion video from dozens of angles. Running around on the field is loads of fun, but I’d rather be in a modern TV control room for accuracy.

18

They could but it begs the question what do they do the rest of the week?
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19

A couple of points.

The NBA telling refs who to “favor” is an accusation by disgraced former NBA referee and felon Tim Donaghy, for what it’s worth.

You could add more referees or have a replay official for all 22 players but here’s what would happen: EVERY play would have a flag or review on it and the product would be almost unwatchable.

There SHOULD if not one already, a replay official for the QB, for the ball carrier and for all passes with the power to stop the game if they think there was a missed targeting, roughing or pass interference call.

I get fans bitching about NFL referees but it is a gripe as old as the league itself and its probably not going to get better as the rules get more engineered and the action gets faster.

I do like what they do in cricket when there’s a review you actually can hear the reviewer on the PA system walking through the replay, asking for different camera angles and saying what he is seeing. It adds transparency to the game and I think taking the fan through the review process live might actually satisfy them more when a call doesn’t go their way.

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20

This article describes what an NFL official does during a game week, and also says that those officials probably put in somewhere between 20-35 hours a week, plus travel. It also mentions that most officials have “day jobs,” often as business owners or senior executives.

They’re studying their previous game, grading their performances, and looking for what they can do to improve. They study game tape of the teams in their next game, so that they know what to expect to see. They study tape of controversial calls and mistakes from across the league from the prior week, again so that they know what to improve on and watch out for.