Moral obligation: Correcting a referee's mistake

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hypothetical scenario:

It’s the football championship game. Team Green is trailing Team Blue, 24-20. There are only a few seconds remaining. Team Green’s quarterback heaves a desperation fourth-down pass into the end zone. A Team Green receiver makes a great catch as time expires. TOUCHDOWN! CHAMPIONSHIP!

…Except, it isn’t. The football hit the ground *before *the Team Green receiver caught it, meaning it’s an incomplete pass. The receiver knows it, his opponents know it, his teammates know it. They all saw it.

But the referees don’t know it. None of the officials saw the ball hit the turf. There is no video instant replay. The refs saw the Team Green receiver with the ball in his hands *after *the ball hit the turf, and signaled touchdown. Needless to say, Team Blue is protesting furiously.

The game, up to this point, has been perfectly officiated. If you are Team Green, do you have a moral obligation to own up to the truth and say, “That was *not *a touchdown?” The refs will believe you and overturn the touchdown. Or do you say, “It’s the job of the refs to officiate accurately, and we aren’t obligated to correct them?”

Additional question: If you’re the coach of Team Green, what would you do if the Team Green receiver, of his own accord, went to the refs and told them the ball hit the ground, therefore costing Team Green the championship?

2

There is no moral obligation whatsoever. You play according to the rules of the game. The rules of the game specify the referees determine catch/no catch and do not require players to report anything to referees.
And if I’m Team Green I am shocked after playing the game all his life my player doesn’t know that and flabbergasted if the referees change the call based on that because they aren’t under obligation to.

3

It’s the ref’s job to get the call right not the players

The player is supposed to try to convince the ref he caught it even if he didn’t . That’s part of the game

4

Tell the truth if you’re asked a question, but there is no need to volunteer information.

So if Blue protests and the ref stands by his call without asking me anything, then the ref’s decision stands. He has the authority and he didn’t ask me for input on the decision.

If the ref comes to me/the team for my take on the story, then I’ll tell him the truth about what I saw.

If a player did volunteer information I’d say “Your heart’s in the right place, kid. But your responsibility - ethically and to the team - was to truthfully answer questions, not to volunteer information.”

5

Personally, I would at least give an “Uh, excuse me, Ref”, and if he told me he didn’t want to talk to me, I’d leave it at that. But I hold no judgement whatsoever against anyone who doesn’t volunteer information, nor even against someone who, when asked, just says “It’s the ref’s job to make that call”.

And it seems to me that this is more a matter of ethics, not morals, and ethical obligations can vary depending on the person and the situation.

6

So to all the answerers so far, a naïve question: would you feel good about winning the championship that way, celebrate it and everything, knowing that you won it through referee incompetence? Or would it always have an asterisk in your heart?

7

over the course of a season refs make so many mistakes

some go against you some go your way

I wouldn’t think it’s tainted

8

Tell the refs. I couldn’t accept the championship otherwise. If they say go away, so be it. My karma will be clear.

9

No moral obligation; not my job. But I very well could cross the line in the post game interview if I insist the call was perfectly right and didn’t cast a shadow over my victory.

10

I agree with the first point but not the second. It’s immoral to pretend you did something you didn’t do to gain an advantage.

11

Here’s the real life example-

and YES is it s real thing in Cricket - in more than one situation (it also applies with certain catches)

12

I’ve seen it happen in snooker where a player calls a foul on himself when he accidentally touches a ball but the official didn’t see it.

13

It happens often in golf. I think Greg Norman twice disqualified himself for infractions that no-one picked up.

I once walked (see above) when given not out to a fantastic catch in a cricket match. I was closer to the catch than the umpire and the slope of the ground would have made it hard for him to know if it carried, but i knew that it had. It was such a great diving catch I didn’t have the heart to rob the fieldsman of it. Certainly the best catch to ever dismiss me.

14

An umpire or referee should never ask for input from either team when making a decision. He can confer with other officials but never with the teams. Not at any level - pro, college, high school, or even little kids. They make bad calls all the time and it’s part of the game. You have to learn to accept it.

Change the scenario: everything is the same except that Blue is leading 35-10 with a few seconds remaining. The same play happens. Should Green tell the referee that the pass was incomplete? I’m guessing that most would say that it doesn’t matter since Green loses anyway. But why should it be different?

15

Or same scenario but the bad call happens in the first 30 seconds of the game. Nobody would think twice about it.

For most sports, the rules are that the ref’s call is final, even if everyone sorta knows it’s a bad call. As others have pointed out, this is a known compromise to keep games moving. Some bad calls go your way, some go against you, but you just have to accept that bad calls are going to be made and move on. Winning is an approximation.

On a personal level I might feel a bit bad about it, but I’d tell myself the above and be OK with it.

Golf and some other (slower) sports might have different cultures where people are expected to self report, but I think if we expected action sports players to confer with the refs every time there was a questionable call, it would hurt gameplay. Gotta keep things moving.

16

Ken Shamrock and Royce Gracie met in one of the early UFCs.

Gracie and Shamrock were on the ground, sparring for position. Gracie took the side, clamped on a side strangle, and Shamrock tapped. The referee was out of position and missed the tap. Gracie released him, and they stood up.

The referee waved for them to continue the fight. Shamrock said, “No, I tapped” and Gracie was awarded the win.

Gracie is a champion. So is Shamrock.

Regards,
Shodan

17

When I was in college, I fenced competitively. (I fenced foil, and wasn’t actually very good, but there you have it). Fencers are ranked A (the highest) through E (the lowest), with a U ranking for unranked fencers. You gain your ranking my placing in a sanctioned tournament, and you have to have a certain number of fencers and ranked fencers to determine what place gets what ranking.

In foil, there’s a thing called right-of-way, where the fencer that starts their attack first gets priority on the touch unless the opponent blocks their blade first. The idea is that if someone is attacking you, the proper thing to do is deflect their attack instead of going for a suicide strike. (Epee is different - whoever hits first gets it). Foil also has a concept of off-target - your touch only counts if you hit someone in the torso. Hitting them in the arm or leg is “off-target” and ends the action. There are electronic scoring mechanisms to determine if a touch was on-target or off-target - a white light for off, and colored lights for on-target for each player.

So, for example, if the right fencer starts their attack, and the left fencer attacks back without blocking, and both colored lights go off, the right fencer gets the point. If the right fencer attacks, the left fencer attacks back without blocking, and the left fencer’s colored light goes off but the right fencers white light goes off (indicating off-target), no touch is awarded and play resumes. BUT, if the right fencer attacks, the left fencer responds without blocking, and ONLY the left fencer’s colored light goes off (if the right fencer misses entirely), THEN will the left fencer get a point.

I say all this because I was once fencing as an unranked fencer in the semi-finals of a tournament against a C-ranked fencer (who should have destroyed me but was getting cocky). If I had won, I would had gotten my first ranking regardless of the final. If I lost the match, nothing for me. The match was progressing and I was actually holding my own, leading at one point. Then for one touch, the other fencer started first, and I stupidly responded without blocking. He hit off-target and I hit on-target. His white light went off, indicating no touch for either fencer. But the ref only saw the colored light for me and signaled a point for me.

Cue an eruption of angry screaming from the other fencer that there was a white light. Cue restrained but also upset yelling from the ref. Cue every fencer, judge, and spectator stopping to see what the heck was going on (the other semi-final match was in a break). It was uncomfortable, but I had seen both lights just as well as the other fencer. So when they both took a breath to keep screaming, I interjected “excuse me, ref, the white light did go off”.

The ref thanked me for my honesty and called the off-target. I lost that match 15-13. Never did earn that ranking. But I also never regretted doing the right thing.

18

I don’t think it would bother me. I’d rather have an undisputed victory, but you take what you can get. You can’t get through a season (or even a typical game) without the refs either making some wrong calls or failing to make calls they should have. By the time you’ve won enough games to play in the championship, you’ve already been affected by dozens of bad ref decisions. Focus on the things you did right (after all, that championship-winning play didn’t happen in a vacuum; you had to play well enough all game to keep it that close).

19

In football the refs are a necessary part of the game. The teams do not referee themselves. Arguing for your cause when you know you are lying is wrong. Saying nothing and letting the refs do their jobs is not.

20

Back in 1940 when my college, Cornell, was a national power in football it was involved in a semi-famous situation which mirrors this. Having won 18 straight games, they played a tight game against Dartmouth winning on the final play of the game. Afterward it was revealed that the referee had made a mistake and given Cornell an extra play when they should have turned the ball over on Downs.

After discovering this “fifth down” when reviewing game films later, Cornell’s players agreed to forfeit the game and their chance at a national championship.

Forty some years later when I attended school there, this game was part of Cornell’s folklore and considered an example of sportsmanship to be proud of.