Referees

The men who take the blame for everything, who dress up in the same color as zebras, and are always down in the play of battle. Referees have the hardest job in sports. Hands down. They have to make the calls no one else wants to make, and then when they do make calls they get heckled by the crowd for it. All they are trying to do is make the game fair. Sometimes, and we can all probably attest to this, they make mistakes or they might have an uneven number of calls during a game. While watching, but especially while playing, that can be very frustrating and most of the time leads to even more calls called against your team. A rule of thumb is never argue with a referee because most of the time you're not going to win.

Most referees dress up in the traditional black and white uniforms, but umpires in baseball wear all black which differentiates them from the others. In football referees throw a yellow flag if there is a penalty, basketball they use a whistle, and baseball they use arms gestures or wait until the play is over to rule what happened on the field.

In football referees try and keep the trash talk and shoving to a minimum, doesn't always happen but that's their goal. Refereeing in football is so difficult because the game is extremely fast, there are so many things happening at one time, and there is a foul on every play but they can't call everything. For example the holding penalty is the hardest to call. Offensive linemen hold on every single play, but the refs are trained and taught to only call it if it's obvious or if it impacts the result of the play. In basketball the blocking foul is the hardest to call because it's hard to tell whether the player was set or shuffling before getting knocked to the ground. Baseball the hardest thing to judge is the thing that happens on every play. The call of balls and strikes. Every umpire is different with their calls which is common sense because all humans aren't the same. The problem is when umpires start to become inconsistent throughout the game and change their strike zone, which unfortunately happens all the time. This makes both managers and players upset and leads to ejections of people.

In my opinion people are too hard on referees. Do they make a lot of mistakes? Sure they are human everyone does, but for the most part they do their difficult job very well. With the new and upcoming instant replay method bad calls are beginning to be corrected more, which is both good for the fans and the game. The goal is to make all calls perfect but that is an unrealistic expectation. With the new technology given to refs and their training I think sports has changed drastically to the better, and each and every year it will continue to improve. Another key focus of refs are player safety. With the improvement of new rules and the lookout for calls to keep players safe, it will lead to less severe injuries and improve the game in that aspect as well. The world of sports is changing in a positive direction and referees are doing their best to imply that.