Your job is not a competitive game with a complete set of rules set up ahead of time that dictate how that game is to be played.
In this scenario, the only thing making the action “wrong” are the rules of the game. So obviously the rules of the game apply for the remedy.
It’s just a game
It’s not a moral dilemma like a murder trial or something
It’s a personal thing.
I want to be a moral person, so I’d tell the referee.
I like the attitude in golf, snooker and cricket where you call a foul against yourself (even if nobody else saw it.)
Recently I was playing league chess against a much weaker player. I was pressing for the win, but blundered. :smack:
I resigned and offered my opponent the customary handshake. His captain asked him what the result was and my opponent replied “I got a draw!” :eek:
Nobody else had seen me resign.
So I told them I’d lost.
And I feel good about that.
Here’s the sort of thing I admire more than winning Championships.
(If I was rich, I’d pay all the college fees for those girls who carried Sara Tucholsky.
I would have to see how it works out. Rules can have unintended side effects, and if a side effect of this is that the entire team lines up by the ref after every play to spend ten minutes self-reporting everything they did/saw, that would be a real problem for me in most sports. Of course, golf is one example where it probably doesn’t matter. There are dozens of players at different points of progress and you don’t watch golf for the nonstop action.
Also, you have to consider that sometimes players are wrong about themselves. I played tennis in high school and still remember one game where I gave up a point because I was so absolutely sure that I’d hit out of bounds. I literally just started walking over to where I’d be giving the next serve. Apparently, I saw it wrong (according to the other player a couple of witnesses), but it didn’t really matter because the other player returned the ball and I was totally unprepared for it. In a self-reporting situation, I’d have told a ref that, no, he was wrong and I really did hit it out of bounds.
Not my job.
If there aren’t refs, or if a meteor came out of the sky and kept the refs from seeing what happened and I was ASKED what happened, I’d tell the truth.
As long as my opinion doesn’t matter, my opinion doesn’t matter. As soon as it matters, then the truth is all there is to report. But in formal sports, the player’s opinion is almost never what matters (which is how it should be).
If the issue was something the ref couldn’t have known, something unusual, well then it might be a different matter. I’m sure we could come up with cases where I’d think it was a player’s duty to speak up, though I can’t think of any, except possibly “There was FLUBBER in the football!”
Great point.
In basketball today, effective players have to constantly skirt the boundary between fouling the ball carrier and merely being legally obstructive. If you don’t push the boundary, you’re allowing scores against your team. When you push the boundary successfully, you prevent more scores than you get in free throws and you avoid fouling out.
It’s your job to push this line and the ref’s job to draw it, and it’s definitely a close judgment call.
On the other hand, if as a football receiver you get the distinct impression that the football isn’t legally inflated, I’d say it’s your job to inform your coach, and let your coach handle it. Of course, that may have to wait for a bit, since you can’t do it in the middle of play.
I’m going to answer this by looking at it from the Ref’s point of view. I’ve been and umpire from NCAA Division 1 down to 10&Under youth little league; and I’ve been a football referee from high school down to Pop Warner. I have received a LOT of training in officiating sports and one thing that is pretty much universally common is the idea that you call what you see; and will only change your mind based on input from your partner(s). In over 20 years of sports officiating, I’ve never had a team correct me on a call where they would be hurt by correcting me that call. Regardless, it doesn’t matter because I made my call, and I would never change it based on input from a non official. Let’s face it 99.999% of times someone is telling you about a bad call you made, it’s because they were hurt by the bad call, not helped by it. Furthermore if you’re telling me a screwed up a call it’s still just as embarrassing and would feel like a form of being shown up. Officials blow call; and guess what, sometimes they know they blow calls after the fact. Sorry to say but it’s an unwritten rule that you don’t correct it, and most certainly don’t do a “make up” call for it later. You just move on. A very small, but common example: As a plate umpire you call a strike on a pitch; after the catcher has the ball you realize you were a little quick on that, and realize the pitch was low. By then the coach is bitching that you called a strike like that. You could never go back and say “Yeah, that was kind of low, it was a ball” because then you’d instantly have an unmanageable game. You’d get questioned on every pitch. Every call you make has to stand on its own; and can’t be corrected except in certain circumstances; and a player or a coach telling me I screwed up isn’t one of those circumstances. Now, that being said, as an official, I’m tell you players and coaches there is no moral reason to correct the referee in the situation you described. The umpire missed the call for whatever reason, and life goes on. He is trained to be in the best possible position or the call; it just didn’t work out this time. If the team wants more officials so this doesn’t happen, they can always pay for more officials. Which is something I had to say more than once when a local youth football league used to only pay for 2 officials for their games! I’m sorry, but officiating even the youngest age group of football is difficult with only 2 refs.
When my kid was playing soccer I used to tell him that there are always three teams on the field, your team, the opposing team, and the referees. Sometimes the refs win, that’s just the way it is.
One aspect that no one has brought up is the impact on teamates and their attitudes about it.
As can be seen here, quite a few people believe there is no moral obligation to reveal it. So let’s suppose that you disagree. The problem is that you’re imposing your moral view on your teamates, many of whom will disagree with your position, but all of whom will lose the game as a result of your action. To me, that makes it more of an ambiguous issue than for an individual sport like golf, where it’s only yourself that you’re sacrificing.
Which is even before considering the attitudes of your teamates. Leaving aside whether the right thing to do is to inform and sink the entire team, it’s quite possible that there will be considerable resentment over your actions, which could impact your career going forward. Something to consider.
A good person would at least attempt to inform the ref of this.