C'mon ref!
ARE YOU BLIND?
The officiating in the match, amirite?
Are referee's even fair?
Short answer: NOPE.
RED CARD.
YOU'RE OUT REF.
Referees are some of the most hated people in the world; there are times when I feel
like the bad guys you see on the news experience less vitriol than some sports officials.
The thing is, they don't have an easy job!
I was a volunteer soccer ref in high school in a small town; parents are not friendly.
But science says I was being biased against the out-of-towners!
Three economists looked at 1,000 pro sports matches and determined the home-team advantage
isn't just how loud the crowd cheers against the visitors.
No!
But, in fact, supposedly impartial referees showed a bias toward the home team, even when
they WEREN'T FROM THERE.
The economists studied cricket -- which for our American audience is like baseball combined
with bowling, but slower than both -- and the rules were adjusted to require neutral
referees, which DID eliminate the bias…
But if there wasn't neutrality, referees showed a 10 to 16 percent bias in favor of the home
teams!
Cricket isn't the only sport in the world obviously, but this isn't the only study to
spot bias.
A 2012 book about American Football found a 57.3 percent ref bias toward the home team;
though they estimate it has to do with "crowd-pleasing."
Which doesn't necessarily vogue, because in the cricket study, most of the bad officiation
happened as the audience shrank.
But maybe it's not about the audience, or the refs at all, but simply the color of the
uniforms?
Sounds weird, but a 2005 study in Nature looked at athletes in the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
Funnily enough, athletes wearing red consistently outperformed those in blue!
The researchers believed athletes who wear red are motivated to perform at a higher level,
because psychologically red inspires dominance and aggression -- which can be very valuable
in sport.
That being said, a critic of the study believes it wasn't the athletes, but the referees!
So, obviously the ref isn't blind, because according to psychologists from the University
of Münster, the officiant was influencing the results by subconsciously favoring the
players in red.
This was especially important in individual sports like tae kwon do, or wrestling, where
competitors wear only red or blue and an umpire or judge has a lot of power.
It doesn't seem to apply to team sports….
But lest you think maybe officiating is ALWAYS BAD; it's important to remember WHY sports
exist.
They're games, they're human.
If robots scored everything, it wouldn't be any fun at all.
There are still people who think instant REPLAY has ruined the game.
The calls of the referee really bring the audience's viewpoints and opinions into the
game.
We shouldn't expect our sports adjudicators to be robots; sure mistakes are made.
But officiants are doing their best, and things aren't always equal in the real world.
If it was a perfectly accurate robot, what would you talk about the next day?!?
What's the worst time refs have screwed up the game?