Much as I would like to believe that they are completely impartial, there have been numerous moments while watching sporting events that have caused me to question my possible naivety, so I’m curious what the SD’s take is.
Since IMHO is the place for polling, and I’d like to see how this splits, I put this here instead of The Game Room.
I doubt that any but the most rogue of referees/umpires are interested in intentionally influencing the outcome of a contest. That’s not to say that I don’t think personal bias can’t creep at times — in fact, that sort of thing seems to be assumed in baseball all the time. So I guess I wouldn’t call that “completely” impartial, but perhaps as impartial as can fairly be expected of someone paid to do a job even-handedly.
<Mod Note> I get that you’re hoping to get the opinion of non-sports fans for your poll, so I’m fine with this thread staying here for now. But speaking generally, you can start polls in other fora, as well. </MN>
My opinion is that a ref may not have a like/dislike for a particular TEAM so much as they dislike someone who is part of the team, and therefore judge against them more harshly than normal.
Excluding Tim Donaghy, of course, officials are as impartial as they can be. Bad calls happen, and they happen a lot, but I don’t think they are made with ill intentions. Officials can crack under pressure in the heat of the moment just the same as athletes.
Well, aside from the rogue ones (like NBA referee Tim Donaghy for example), I’m talking about some not-so-unpopular beliefs, like:
[ul]
[li]Certain (veteran/popular) pitchers and batters will get preferential treatment for balls/strikes in baseball, or receivers and defenders when going for a pass that’s up for grabs in American football and there’s contact from opposing players[/li]
[li]A referee will intentionally, through calls or non-calls, try to keep a game close for the sake of entertainment[/li]
[li]Refs will favor the cities that would result in a greater viewership in the next round of the playoffs, or more popular teams in general[/li][/ul]
Good to know, thanks!
ETA: Ninja’d by Barkis!
I can believe the first one happens, not as preferential treatment but because the ump/ref has an unconscious assumption that a star player knows what he’s doing. Jeter didn’t swing? It was probably a ball. Lebron blocked the shot? It was probably a clean block, no foul.
I don’t believe the other two happen, at least in U.S. sports.
The first answer is probably the closest, but I am abstaining because I don’t think any answer accurately represents my point-of-view.
Excluding rogues, I don’t think officials intentionally sway the outcome of games. However, I think there are documented biases, such as towards more well-known players or the home team, that creep into their work. Officials, in conjunction with leagues, could reduce the impact of these biases by being aware of them and studying where they tend to manifest, so the refs can counteract the biases in the heat in the moment. Therefore, modern officiating is not as unbiased as it reasonably could be.
Man, 2 threads which should have been in the Game Room in one night…
I watch Toronto baseball all the time and have the definite impression that the umpires favor American teams. It may be subconscious, but it seems real.
I think that, by and large, calls on the bases are pretty accurate (and instant replay has convinced me of that), but ball and strike calling is atrocious. Not necessarily biased in one direction, but there is this attitude that if a pitcher can consistently hit a low outside corner, just out of the strike zone, they will give him that call. And I am convinced that umpires have it in for certain players and will systematically call against them. Ball and strike calling can be automated and should be. Umpires are paticularly bad at low calls since there is too much parallax. And they judge too much by where the ball is caught.
My favorite sport is curling and, while there are referees, you can watch a dozen matches and never see one actually used.
I personally think NFL, NHL, and MLB officials are nearly all honest and trying hard to be impartial. They’re affected by human biases, principally crowd noise (so home teams get better calls) and often relying somewhat on the reputation of the player. IMHO, the NHL also has a moderate (semi-conscious, I’d guess) tendency to try and balance calls – if a team has gotten two calls in their favor, the bar for a call against them lowers.
In soccer, I think referee bias is just as rare, though the crowd noise effect might be slightly higher due to the nature of the kinds of calls in the sport. However due to FIFA policies, major international matches (particularly World Cup) often get just plain incompetent referees, who will (in addition to just making mistakes) be more susceptible to the home crowd/reputation bias, and maybe even let some nationalistic bias affect them.
NBA referees, on the other hand…
This happens on a level I do not believe to be intentional. Pitchers like Greg Maddux who have great control might get the benefit of the doubt on a close pitch. Guys who struggle with control are less likely to get that. It was so frustrating watching Daisuke Matsuzaka, who must have gotten the Maddux treatment in Japan, because he had a hard time adjusting to the MLB strike zone. He’d nibble, nibble, nibble consistently a few inches off the plate and just could not get the call. He didn’t have the cred here that Maddux had built. So I don’t think that stuff is intentionally done to sway the outcome, it’s just a mindset that becomes habit when umps have seen certain pitchers over and over again.
Of note, if this discussion were expanded beyond pro sports to the Olympics, I’d have a different opinion. Many Olympic judges are dirty cheaters.
I am not a sports fan, so I don’t have a lot of first-hand experience with this. That said… I think for the most part, referees probably try to be impartial. It’s their job, after all, and most people take their job seriously and try to do it in correctly, because almost everyone thinks of themselves as honest and ethical, and being otherwise would cause unpleasant cognitive dissonance. That doesn’t mean they’re good at being impartial, though, because they’re human, and humans are really, really bad at impartiality.
Science shows we don’t actually see everything we think we see. Our senses give us a small amount of information, and our brains magically fill in the blanks with what we expect to be there, or what we tell ourselves should have been there, or even what other people tell us was there after the fact. And of course all of this is strongly influenced by our own opinions, whether we want it to be or not.
This is why eyewitnesses are much less useful in criminal investigations that we think they should be, and I bet it also accounts for a fair percentage of incorrect or ‘unfair’ calls by referees.
Generally they’re pretty solid and honest. My main complaints are about the degree of letting things slide.
In NHL & NFL a lot of penalizable dirty play is ignored.
My pet gripe in baseball is giving credit for the sloppy double play where the guy guarding second tags the bag without the ball or never tags the bag at all.
In each case, deciding how severe and how many cheats are enough before they get called is a messy judgment call by each individual official. One that collectively will produce a perception of bias in the fans even when none actually exists as a matter of intent or of statistics.
The common commentator whining about “Just let them play” really means “Just let them cheat, and may the bigger cheaters prosper more.” The fan base ought to be all over that kind of garbage, but somehow they aren’t.
Oh yes. NBA refs are easily the least professional of any major sport. It’s widely believed that the star players are allowed to get away with misconduct that a player of lesser stature will get fouled for. And given that all but the most one-sided matches seem to stay close until late in the game, I’d bet that the refs may skew calls in order to keep the game close.
Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity. My only real gripe with American sports referees (which is not necessarily their fault) is the principle that they shouldn’t be calling penalties that affect the outcome of the game; or, in other words, that only blatant fouls should be penalized once you get to the last possession/two minutes/whatever. A foul’s a foul. What fucking difference does it make if it happens on the last play?
I give them the benefit of the doubt. There is so much scrutiny on every call, and so many people keeping statistics on everything that someone who routinely favored some particular criteria would have to be discovered eventually. For example, if refs were calling things to keep the game even, that ought to be easy to test statistically. If a player got more fouls on away games than at home games, that would be obvious too.
In baseball the strike zone is pretty fluid among umpires, which is strange. NFL refs don’t talk about “my end zone” the way umps do “my strike zone”. If they call it consistently, no problem. But when the stars get their breaks, that’s poor. “Mr. DiMaggio didn’t swing? Must have been a ball.” There was one ump that later admitted that he hated a certain player and deliberately positioned himself to block his view. But on the whole, MLB umps are the best.
NFL refs do favor certain players and teams and disfavor others. Calvin Johnson almost needs to get the defender to sign an affidavit in order to get a TD pass called complete. Late game calls seem to go against the Lions more than others.
NHL refs do a pretty good job, but sometimes it seems like they say, “Gee, it’s about time we had a power play” and call something picky just to get one. They do put their whistles in their pockets in the last five minutes of playoff games but that’s expected.
Home team bias is documented.
There seems to be a pattern here.
Why does the fan base believe that cheating is a good thing, and more cheating is even better? What does it say in general about fandom and about society?
With instant replay any ref that blatantly makes a wrong call will be called to task for it. It’s easier for them to miss calls, where you might see some bias creep in.