You May Believe It, But It Ain't So

By Paul Hamann

Don’t believe everything you hear. It’s easy to question a message when it comes from a coach or player, but what about a fellow official? It may surprise you, but there are plenty of philosophies that officials adhere to that are flat-out wrong, too. Learn about some common philosophies you should avoid.

“Kid, let me give you a little advice. It’s a philosophy I’ve picked up through the years. …”

So says the veteran official, taking the newbie under his or her wing at a meeting or in the locker room. The new official looks up at the veteran, waiting for advice to fall like gemstones.

What follows, however, can hurt an official as often as it helps because the “philosophies” aren’t always the best for the game.

Whether they’re called philosophies, axioms or clichés, “the big advantage of having a philosophy is that it helps you to be consistent,” said Walt Anderson, NFL referee and Big 12 coordinator of officials. However, he adds, “You cannot hang your hat on absolutes. The only thing that’s black-and-white about officiating is the stripes on our jerseys.”

For a common example, take the old saying that “the best-officiated games are when nobody notices the officials.” Many officials subscribe to that rule, including ones at the highest levels. But is it true as an absolute?

Certainly the most pleasant games for us may be when nobody notices the officials. It means that there were no severe mistakes, no weird situations, no controversy and no real problems. In other words, it was a game in which nothing much happened. Maybe the officiating was stellar, or maybe it was merely adequate, but the officiating went entirely unnoticed.

Contrast that to a situation in which there’s a close call late in a tight game. The official has to make a split-second decision in front of a divided crowd. The official makes the perfect call — and as a result is highly unpopular among half the participants and half the crowd. Or maybe, instead of a close play, there’s a bizarre one. The officiating crew must come together to make a tough ruling on a rare and arcane situation. While its ruling is correct, it is not understood by the crowd — or perhaps even by the players and coaches.

All of those officials will not only be noticed, they may be jeered. Does that mean they have had a bad game? Quite the contrary. They have done exemplary work during a situation in which they were put in the spotlight. Officials need to be ready to be noticed — to step up and make the tough call.

The problem with that axiom is it suggests that the goal of an official is to duck under the radar. That goal is neither feasible nor good, so let’s put that cliché to bed.

In a similar vein, let’s examine other officiating philosophies that can get us into trouble.

STRIKES ONE AND TWO BELONG TO THE UMPIRE. STRIKE THREE BELONGS TO THE BATTER.

“The strike zone is the strike zone, and umpires should call the zone according to what is prescribed in the manual,” said baseball umpire Mark Ditsworth, who works Big 10 games.

That’s clear enough. Supervisors, coaches and players do not care for strike zones that drift from pitch to pitch, no matter the justification for it. “If you start varying (the strike zone) because it’s ball two — so now you’re going to call a strike that’s really wide — you’re doing an injustice to the game,” he added. “You’re confusing the hitters, and that’s not our job.”

Tim Catton, an umpire in the Big 10 and Missouri Valley conferences and former minor league umpire, doesn’t see it as his job to cut the pitcher a break. “I guess I’ve heard (that philosophy) a couple of times, but I’ve never believed it,” he said. “If (a pitcher) gets behind on the batter, that’s his fault. I do not give a 3-0 or a 3-1 pitch that’s not a strike, because it’s not my fault that you got behind the hitter. So that’s ball four. Let’s go to the next guy.”

The strikes do not belong to the pitcher, batter or umpire. They belong to the rulebook.

THE BEST OFFICIALS CAN SOLVE ANY SITUATION PEACEFULLY. THEY NEVER GIVE TECHNICAL FOULS/CARDS.

Football officials never smile and say, “I didn’t call a single illegal motion penalty all year!” Basketball officials don’t boast about neglecting to call illegal screens. Soccer officials don’t talk with pride about never signaling offside, and baseball and softball umpires don’t brag about failing to call obstruction when it happens.

Why, then, do so many of us view enforcing the rules that lead to technical fouls, cards, ejections or even suspensions, as a sign of poor officiating?

“If you’re doing your job, and you’re doing your job the right way, those are things that are naturally going to come up,” NCAA Division I basketball official Mike Sanzere said.

All rules must be enforced — even unpleasant ones.

Kim Vieira, a college soccer official and assigner for six different conferences, suggested that officials sometimes just don’t want to deal with the aftermath. “Some officials will not pull the card out for two reasons,” he said. “One, they don’t want to write up reports. Two, they don’t want to have to eject a player for something that may be real cheap.” Certainly, nobody wants to call a cheap foul on any player, ejection or otherwise. But to avoid the correct consequence merely to avoid 15 minutes of paperwork is simply neglect.

That philosophy might simply be a justification for timidity. Consider Sanzere’s strong words. “At some point in time, you’re going to have to deal with controversy. That’s part of officiating,” he said. “If you’re looking to avoid it by avoiding a technical foul, then in my humble opinion, you’re in the wrong business. You need to get out.”

Of course, a few officials subscribe to the opposite fallacy. …

THE BEST OFFICIALS ARE TOUGH AS NAILS! THEY GIVE LOADS OF TECHNICAL FOULS/CARDS.

Vieira sometimes sees the opposite axiom among officials who give out cards like candy in an effort to appear tough and in charge. “A lot of officials will hand out cards fairly quickly for dissent,” he said. “They’ll hand out cards very quickly for some frivolous-type activity that goes on. But simply because you give up a lot of cards, that doesn’t mean you’ve kept the game under control. Cards have never kept players or coaches under control.” To prove Vieira’s point, think about the last game you saw, or perhaps officiated, which had ejections, lots of technicals or a lot of cards. Was that game the perfect picture of referee control? Perhaps — but perhaps not.

The problem of hair-trigger cards is compounded when the same officials are faced with a legitimate card situation later on in the game, Vieira says. “Then, when it comes down to the real hard tackles from behind, the elbows to the face, jumping on top of someone or going into the goalkeeper, they don’t give those (cards) out — and that’s when the card should be used. That’s when you have to deal with and control players.”

With the evidence on both sides, we can put those philosophies to bed. The only conclusion: The number of technical fouls, cards and ejections has no correlation with the quality of officiating or the quality of the official.

IF YOU CALL A FOUL AT THE END OF THE GAME, MAKE SURE IT’S A ‘GOOD ONE.’

If philosophies serve to keep us consistent, that one should be rejected on its face because it encourages inconsistency at the worst possible time.

“We strive to make them all good ones,” says Melissa Barlow, whose women’s basketball career includes championship assignments in both the NCAA and WNBA. “I understand how that philosophy got started … there’s some kind of a phantom call at the end of a game. But if you miss that call in the first two minutes, it can be just as devastating, particularly if it’s a very good player who is valuable to a team.” If a “bad one” early on results in the benching of a key player later, it can be equally harmful.

“You certainly want every foul you call to be there,” Anderson said. “So if you want to classify or define that as a ‘good one,’ likewise you would hope that the things that you elect to pass on weren’t something that you ended up needing to actually call.” In other words, if it’s a “good one” with five minutes to go in the first half, it’s a “good one” with five seconds to go in a tie game.

Be aware of game situations: the score, the time on the clock and possible next moves by both teams. But a good one is a good one from the first play to the last. Make them all good, and make them all consistent.

CALL IT THE SAME ON ONE SIDE AS ON THE OTHER.

That philosophy, while subscribed to by more officials than we’d like to admit, was probably invented by coaches. In their eyes, a fairly called game often means that each team has nearly identical foul or penalty totals. In the real world, that doesn’t usually happen.

“When you have a high-level team playing a very unskilled team, as a referee that’s probably one of the toughest games that you get assigned to, because you’ve got to figure out where you allow both teams to play,” said Vieira. “Therefore, one team may end up getting more fouls called on it because it’s not as skilled as the high-level team. That’s where the fallacy comes in, because you should call everything evenly, but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.”

Sanzere said the foul count doesn’t even register to him during games. “I really don’t count ’em, Coach,” he’ll tell the complaining party. Plus, he points out that philosophy can lead to inventing fouls or ignoring fouls to even out the totals. “If you’re going out there with the philosophy that ‘I’m going to try to even things up,’ it’s not going to happen. Somebody’s going to be ticked off and you’re not doing your job. You’re not going to be around very long.”

Part of Jim Blackwood’s job as coordinator of football officials for the Western Athletic Conference is to watch game film and grade officials. He’s given plenty of high scores when the foul totals were wildly lopsided. He remembers one game in particular — a blowout win in which the winning team was flagged for 11 penalties and the losing team for none. “If you’re that aggressive, you’re going to commit more fouls,” Blackwood, who also works as an NFL replay official, said. “And the other team … they just weren’t playing. They didn’t make any mistakes, they didn’t get frustrated … they just wanted to go home.” That game is just one example of many types of games in which good officials will wind up whistling one team for far more infractions.

So how do we handle coach complaints about a lopsided foul discrepancy?

Mary Struckhoff, NCAA coordinator of women’s basketball officiating and NFHS assistant director, suggests game awareness and tactful dead-ball conversations with coaches can help. “We have to be careful with how we communicate with coaches,” she said. “But if we say, ‘Coach, what I’m seeing is that your team is playing aggressive defense, getting attempted steals and the other team is in a zone,’ we’ve communicated what we’re seeing. They may not agree with it, but I think it bodes well for us to understand the type of game that’s being played.”

We can’t call it the same on one side as on the other because players seldom play the same on one side as on the other.

IF THE PLAYER COMES CLOSE WITH A TAG OR CLOSE TO THE BAG, IT’S GOOD ENOUGH TO CALL THE OUT.

“The neighborhood play” is common enough to have gained common usage and even acceptance among some baseball and softball fans. That should not be the case. Failure to call the close tag play properly can result in tremendous disadvantage to the runner and advantage to the fielder.

First, consider the runner who, beaten by the throw, makes an outstanding athletic play to avoid a tag.

“You’ve got to make them tag the guy,” said Catton. “If the ball beats him and the tag’s not down, then the guy is not out. The reason I’d say that is that kids are getting so good on the slides. If they make a nice slide and the guy doesn’t get the tag, then you’ve got to watch the play and make sure he does tag him.”

Additionally, says Ditsworth, in amateur baseball, the force play slide rule is in effect. That means that fielders learn how to turn at second base. A fielder who doesn’t touch the bag gains an advantage on double plays by getting wider of the runner for the throw to first. That advantage is compounded at the pro levels. A fielder who executes a neighborhood play can gain “tremendous width because he’s going to be taken out,” Ditsworth said.

Umpires can prevent both of those injustices by calling the play as it is meant to be called.

ADJUST YOUR CALLS IN A BLOWOUT GAME — BE KIND TO THE LOSING TEAM.

In an 80-20 blowout game, our sympathies often go to the losing team. Therefore, bleeding-heart officials suggest the following philosophy: Once the outcome is beyond doubt, any calls against the losing team are merely rubbing salt in the wound, and any close calls should go their way to ease the pain.

What’s wrong with being nice?

“The tape doesn’t lie,” said Struckhoff. “As a supervisor, I want to be able to defend my officials. When I look at the tape and understand the score and the situation within the game, I can’t defend something that doesn’t happen.” Even if the intentions come from the heart, officials who get calls wrong on purpose are selling out their integrity.

Barlow recalls a talk from a highly regarded college coach at camp who explained why. “He was often on the side of winning those lopsided games,” Barlow said. “And a lot of times, his second or third stringers finally get in to the game. That is their reward for all the hours they’ve put in at practice. They’re not the best athletes, they’re not the stars, but they get in there, and we just decide not to call anything for the last two minutes. So they don’t get their moment in the sun. They don’t get to take their free throws that they deserve.” It is unjust to penalize that player because her opponent is overmatched.

Additionally, officiating out of pity isn’t doing the losing team any favors. “They’re not going to learn,” Barlow said. “They’re not going to get any better. They’re suffering from those wild inconsistencies as well. One game we’re letting them beat the heck out of kids because we don’t want to call anything. Then the next game someone might call it to the finish.”

In high school sports, it’s worth pointing out that junior varsity players for both sides may be getting their first tastes of varsity action late in blowout games. They want to feel a genuine experience of varsity competition. That includes varsity-quality officiating. Changing the strike zone or the definition of a foul late in the game denies them a key part of that learning experience.

Don’t let misguided empathy or the desire to get to the locker room sooner impact the quality of your officiating.

LET THE PLAYERS DECIDE THE GAME: SWALLOW YOUR WHISTLE AND POCKET YOUR FLAG IN THE LAST TWO MINUTES OF A CLOSE GAME.

Vieira understands the impulse behind that misguided philosophy. “A lot of referees do not want to end the game on the penalty kick,” he said. “Unfortunately, there is a double standard that does exist. When we get down to the last parts of the game, when a penalty kick probably should be awarded — a dangerous tackle or something from behind in the penalty area — some referees tend to swallow their whistles because they don’t want to be the cause of one team winning over the other. It’s unfortunate, but it does happen.”

The harsh reality: By drawing/committing that late foul, the players have taken major steps toward deciding the game’s outcome. Therefore, by taking a pass on such a call, the officials do exactly what the philosophy purports to avoid.

“That one is so easy to debunk,” says Barlow, “because our job is to referee that play.” She gives the example of a team running a perfect play in which a player gets a clear layup and is fouled by a beaten defender. However, “because it’s not a mugging, you say, ‘Well, let’s go into overtime and let the kids decide.’ I would argue that, by not calling that foul, you are deciding the game. You are deciding that game should go into overtime when they did everything they should do correctly. You’ve got to make that call.”

“You don’t want to give the game away on something that is real cheap,” Vieira continued, “but at the same time, you do have players who get injured on those types of plays. They (the foulers) are not ejected, they’re not sent off and they’re not penalized for what they do.” That’s not right, from the first seconds of the game to the last.

USE COMMON SENSE: SOMETIMES A GOOD OFFICIAL SETS ASIDE THE RULEBOOK TO DO WHAT’S RIGHT.

That philosophy certainly sounds reasonable at first. But there’s a problem: What’s common sense, and where is it written down?

“We all meet different people in different walks of life,” Barlow said. “We meet some about whom we might say, ‘Wow, he has a lot of common sense’ and some that certainly don’t. The same is true of officials.”

Therefore, the second we set aside the rulebook in favor of “common sense,” just about anything goes.

Barlow provides a basketball example. The possession arrow points to team A, but the official mistakenly gives the ball to team B. Team B takes two undefended dribbles before the official realizes the mistake. Why not just blow the whistle, take the ball back and give it to team A? “Common sense says just take the ball back. They’ve only taken two dribbles,” Barlow said. But there’s one problem: There’s no rule to back up what feels like common sense, and that leads to trouble.

“When I don’t follow the rulebook and somebody else does, it’s inconsistent,” Barlow continued. “Where do I draw the line between common sense and ‘the rulebook says this, so we really have to do it’? Where I might draw that line is very different from where someone else might draw it. That’s why we have a rulebook — so we can attempt to get some measure of consistency.”

Struckhoff agrees. “I can’t defend making crap up. We don’t have do-overs,” she said. However, she suggests that veterans who teach that philosophy to younger officials might have specific cases in mind — and that they should tell their younger counterparts the specific cases.

“The younger, less-experienced official hears that and applies it to the wrong situations,” she says. “So I think we’re better off in this industry, especially when we’re trying to mentor and train young officials, not making a blanket statement like that, but giving the specific situation.” Otherwise, we open too many situations up to personal interpretations.

That’s a can of worms we don’t want to open, and we won’t have to if we stick to the rulebook. So utilize that philosophy sparingly — if at all — and don’t pass it on as an absolute.

MAKEUP CALLS ARE OK TO ELIMINATE ADVANTAGES FROM PRIOR SCREW-UPS.

Like many of the prior philosophies, that one falls under the “getting it wrong on purpose” category. No official should ever do that and expect to keep working.

“There’s not an official I know that goes in with that thought,” Sanzere said. “I was told a long time ago: Films don’t lie. That’s all coaches do — they look at films. They look at them probably three to four times right after a game.” If an official tries a “makeup call” during the game, “It shows up very evidently on a film. So you can’t do it because you’re going to stick out like a sore thumb,” Sanzere said.

Officials will make honest mistakes. Those are forgivable. But to “even things up” by making a dishonest mistake is not acceptable in any situation, sport or level.                 

Ditsworth agrees. “Two wrongs do not make a right,” he said. “You’re there to get the call right. Your judgment is your judgment, and in the long run, you’re going to lose your credibility.”                 

As Winston Churchill called democracy “the worst form of government — except for all the others that have been tried,” those officiating philosophies, axioms and rules of thumbs might be the worst ever — except for all the others (or none at all). But at the very least, the debunking of that group demonstrates that we can’t let our clichés do our thinking for us.

The only hard and fast rule is not a cliché at all: Get the calls right.

Paul Hamann has officiated high school basketball since 1996. He is a high school teacher who lives in Vancouver, Wash.