FanPost

Refereeing and Elite rates

What does it mean to be elite? In basketball, you are an elite 3 point shooter if you make more than 40% of your threes. In baseball, you are an elite hitter if you hit above like .300. In refereeing, you are elite if you get 100% of your calls right.

Wait.

Where did I get that from?

I am hearing a lot about things that refs should be fined for missing calls, especially calls at the end of games. The prevailing notion is that an elite referee will get the calls right all the time or most of the time. Is this based on anything? There was a reference that said that in 38 minutes of the Lakers' close games, there were 34 missed calls. This includes, fouls, violations, out of bounds, everything. In that time, there were hundreds of judgements made. Was that screen stationary? Did he touch the line? Who did that go off? Did he get ball first? Did he give the opponent space to land? How long was the big man in the paint? The referees are constantly making judgment calls on a second by second basis and have no time for second guessing because, by then, something else has already happened. And I love when people say "On the replay, it was obvious that..." Well, guess what? They don't have replay on the court making the calls. They also don't have a bird's eye view of the situation. They are just one person with their field of vision and their own gumption. I feel like players, coaches, and fans, who don't have to care about what they miss, harp on the refs when they couldn't even begin to do what they do. It isn't healthy and honestly, mostly hypocritical, to be this hard on referees.

I think referees that miss a ton of calls compared to their peers should be graded. But I think that establishing perfection as the standard and every ref that doesn't meet that standard is corrupt and the whole league is corrupt because of it. That perfection that we seek isn't realistic and without any actual standard, people go wild. I find it funny that they say that they are losing sleep over that call. Don't. It was an honest mistake and, ultimately, doesn't matter.

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