What sports are the most empowering of referees, where the refs intepretation of the rules and regs influences the way a team will approach the game?
The question is prompted by a big rugby union series that has just finished, British and Irish Lions v Australia. RU is a sport with a lot of rules, and these rules have been allowed to proliferate such that the ref now appears to hold a disproportionate amount of influence. In each of the three games the refs’ cvs were scrutinised in the media, and each team adjusted their strategy, in advance, according to the refs’ known philosophies of policing the scrum and the breakdown. It was also suggested that team selection would be influenced by the choice of ref, although this could be an exaggeration. Point is, a RU ref has a lot of lattitude to set the rules of engagement within the overall structure of the sport [my impression is that most people think this is a big problem, but that’s another thread].
Are there any other sports that place a similar amount of power into the hands of the referee? Clearly the ref has ultimate authority in all (most?) sports, and we’ve all seen our teams get the rough and the smooth of that authority. But I’m talking about sports where a team (or individual) would actually factor in the ref’s personality into their preparation for the contest.
Baseball umpire.
An inconsistent strike zone will force the batter and the pitcher to change their approach, every play in the field requires a call by an umpire.
A single missed call can affect the entire outcome of a game.
I am a rugby union ref and am keen to see what other boarders thoughts are on this, particularly with respect to alternative choices.
At the top level in rugby union, the refs are analysed by the teams as much as the opposition and some of the stuff that the OP mentions that (s)he thinks might be an exaggeration, to be honest, aren’t (this happened during the World Cup Final in 2003 rather than being a selection at the start of the game but Jason Leonard was sent on with explicit orders to NOT scrummage as the ref had taken against the starting prop forward for England). The ins and outs of rugby union refs probably are best dealt with elsewhere but, as I said, I am interested to hear other alternatives.
Definitely boxing. Sports commisions are slightly more stringent now in enforcing rules and regulations, but it’s almost entirely after the fact, and rarely has any impact on future refereeing. Going back only 20 years boxing referees had complete discretion in determining the rules of the fight. I believe in England and possibly elsewhere referees can still be one of the judges, and sometimes the only judge in a fight.
I agree with you about the home plate ump having a strong influence on the game, but I don’t think that same thing applies to the base umps. Umps can an do blow calls, and I’m sure different umps will allow different levels of “ghost tagging” at second base, but teams aren’t playing different players to accommodate that.
A single missed call in any sport can affect the entire outcome of a game. Just ask San Diego (Hochuli) about that.
How can a boxing ref unduly influence a match? I know he can stop the match at any time and can even be a judge on the outcome, but would his style of refing the match change the way the boxers box?
I think a soccer ref comes close in this case. Teams probably wouldn’t change their lineup based on the ref, but they certainly would play very differently if they think the ref will book them or not book them.
That huge drama in the NFL last year with the replacement refs shows how influential they are. There were players from teams that won saying publicly that their team should have lost. And when the real refs came back on the field, they got a standing ovation from both the crowd and the players!
Yeah, I still get mad when I think about the ref stopping the Mike Weaver heavyweight fucking championship fight after 1 minute of the first round, with Weaver on his feet and defending himself. That was the last time I bet on a fight.
The problems encountered there were merely a matter of competency, not from any ref’s personal difference in style. The differences in officiating crews don’t alter teams’ strategies much. An ump’s strike zone has a much bigger impact on a game than how tightly a back judge calls defensive pass interference, IMHO. The size of the crew makes a difference, too. An NFL crew is seven officials plus the replay guy.
Basketball refs can vastly affect play based on how tight they call certain fouls. If players will decide how often to drive the lane based on how likely they’ll get a call. When my wife did high school ball, a game getting “out of hand” would turn into a tickytack show until the players got the message to back off each other.
An umpire has the potential to have a huge affect on the game, but in practice very rarely does. Guys with inconsistent strike zones don’t make it into the major leagues. Some guys have their idiosyncracies like calling high strikes, while others won’t call anything above the belly button, but these are known in advance and batters account for them.
With the advent of pitch tracking software and the use of it on TV, it is remarkable how good these guys are. I watched a game the other day where Bob Davidson was the home plate umpire. I think Bob Davidson is the worst umpire in baseball, but he was perfectly accurate all game.
So would this go as far as a team rotating their pitching line up to account for the umpire? - e.g. We’d better not start Randy tomorrow night - he’ll have terrible trouble with umpire X’s strike zone.
[QUOTE=Cumbrian]
I am a rugby union ref and am keen to see what other boarders thoughts are on this, particularly with respect to alternative choices.
[/QUOTE]
What level do you ref at Cumbrian? And are you known for having a particular rules philosophy? e.g. I think the guy who did the first lions test favoured the side with the ball on just about every breakdown.
The respect accorded to RU refs by the players is rightly lauded, but their current influence on the game seems way off beam to me. Pretty sure it wasn’t always like this.
I ref at Level 7 (i.e. if you count the Premiership as Level 1 and count down the pyramid from there, I’m at the 7th level - this equates to the London 2 league, I think or equivalent leagues in other areas of the country - London just used as an example), though I should note that I have only just been promoted to this level and haven’t done a game yet at Level 7. Level 7 is a reasonable standard though - you’re probably on the fringes of where some sides with ambition are offering small cash in hand payments to some players but otherwise the standard is that of good amateurs. I started about 5-6 years ago after my ability to play was curtailed by injury.
In terms of my personal style, I guess I have a few rules of thumb:
I’m pretty liable to penalise anyone off their feet - attacking or defending - and this would include defending players contesting the breakdown supporting their body weight on anything other than their feet (this is one of Chris Pollock’s interpretations I would support - he’s the guy you are referring to - though I would contend that I pay attention to the side with the ball as much as the side without; diving off your feet to prevent a contest when you have the ball is just as much of a penalty in my book. Equally, if a player is isolated at the tackle having taken the ball in and the opposition are first there and comply with the law, I am expecting a turnover or the player on the floor will be penalised for holding on).
I like to play a long advantage - probably too long, we’ll see when I get assessed at the higher level this year - but this is because sometimes a lot of the reasons that you might blow the whistle resolve themselves if you let the game get on. Unless something is seriously wrong or the game is definitely being killed, better to keep the whistle in your pocket in my view.
I want people to have space to play the game. As a result, I’m really hot on offside - if the defenders are always cutting the space down illegally, how can you have a game where there is an opportunity to attack? If you don’t do something about it, the game becomes an arm wrestle which is generally no fun to play in - the teams involved want to score tries and have an opportunity to try and do things.
I am aiming to be consistent. If I penalise Side A for doing something and Side B do the same, they will get penalised too. In some respects, I am more worried about being consistent than right (though ideally I would be both), so as the teams can work out what I want and play to that.
Finally, I try to be very vocal and clear with what I am saying/doing. If the players understand the decisions I am giving and have had clear advice that they were likely to be penalised, you cut a lot of frustration out of the game in my experience. In this way try and clear up potential problems before they begin to impact the game. Again, it’s about, ultimately, trying to keep my whistle in my pocket.
I’m fairly confident that the teams I ref will recognise these things from me - particularly if they have seen me on a couple of occasions. It’s a bit more difficult for the teams at the lower levels because there are more refs at a similar level, so you might not see the same guys on a regular basis to start to pick up on refs personalities and personal pet peeves. It’s why we have regular meetings as a refs’ society, so as we can agree how we’re going to look at certain aspects of a game, so we can try and be consistent. The problem is, at the top level at least, if they are doing this, it doesn’t seem to be coming through (and they are pros so should be more capable than we are) - so of course there are going to be inconsistencies game to game for the teams involved.
Perfect example. While looking at an official outside the ring the referee decided Weaver was unable to continue and waved off the fight. There are plenty of cases to cite. I don’t know of any sports outside of martial arts where a referees have this kind of power to arbitrarily determine the outcome of an event, and I’ve never heard of any except boxing where that kind of abuse occurs. And at the same time boxing referees who actually follow the rules are often treated with contempt by both the public and boxing officials as in the case of Richard Steele ending the Meldrick Taylor/Julio Caesar Chavez fight with a few seconds left in the final round.
An interesting twist on this question would be… if you wanted to be a crooked official, and remain undetected, what sport should you choose? That is, if you wanted to be an umpire/judge/linesman/something, and you wanted to have the power to very dependably determine the outcomes of games (presumably for gambling purposes), but you wanted to remain undetected for obvious reasons, what sport should you choose?
(Obviously this conversation is meant entirely theoretically…)
First of all, I think your best bet is to always help out the team that is the favorite anyhow. You’re much less likely to get noticed if you officiate over a bunch of games where the better team wins than the other way around. But you’ll still want to pick a sport where there are a lot of judgment calls you can make that can you can push all in one direction without any smoking gun replay showing that you’re wrong. And you also presumably need something where other officials, who aren’t in on it with you, can’t get in your way.
So I think baseball home plate umpire has to be a good bet. Just shade the strike zone in or out an inch or so for and against the team you’re helping… it won’t always work, but as long as your gambling crime buddies are willing to play a slow but dependable game, it seems awfully unlikely that you will get caught.
Dungeons and Dragons, and all similar Role-Playing Games.
The “Referee” has the absolute final word in deciding how to interpret the rules, and in determining penalties and/or awards.
Ever played D&D, or watched it played? Oooooh yeah, the smart player certainly should do this!
You define sports *your *way, I’ll define sports *my *way. Thanks.
Professional wrestling has to take the crown here. The refs have tremendous power to politely request that the wrestlers stop fracturing each others craniums with chairs, they can wave their arms randomly, and they have the undisputed authority to get knocked unconscious for minutes at a time by a gentle slap.
Aside from the strike zone issue, I haven’t heard of anyone in baseball adjusting their strategy based on who’s umping the game. And even with regard to how the home plate ump calls balls and strikes, I get the impression this is something that players adjust to during the game rather than something they plan for ahead of time.
