POLL: Which sport has the BEST officiating?

[john4psu]

IMO, it’s certainly not hockey and they don’t even know what a catch is so that rules out professional football. It surely isn’t college football as Ohio State and Michigan have a different set of rules than everyone else and I can put together a lengthy videotape of the unbelievably terrible calls against Penn State in both football and basketball. They dance and take so many steps that traveling is never called in basketball. That basically leaves baseball by default. To their credit, calls can now be challenged and reversed. Balls and strikes are still a different matter.

 

[artsandletters]

I watch college football and basketball, a little MLB, NHL and NFL. Refs in both college sports are atrocious, especially basketball. They are the worst. So I chose baseball umps as the best of the worst. The one thing about umps that has annoyed over the years is when they call a sliding baserunner out based on a tag on the shin area. There's about a foot of leg below that tag with the runner's foot on the base. Other than that, balls and strikes are different for each ump it seems, but as long as they're consistent.

We've all seen CFB refs out and out cheat. Still, nothing compares to the incompetence of college b-ball refs. Some of them should be sent to Quantanamo. They could spend their days blowing their whistles since they love the sound so much.

 

[LafayetteBear]

MLB or NBA. Both leagues give officiating the importance it deserves, employing their officials on a full time basis and paying them well.

The NFL has a ton of money, but still does not employ its officials full time, They tend to have day jobs as a result. I suppose this is partly a function of the fact that the NFL season is a bit shorter then either the MLB season or the NBA season, and each team has only one game a week.

 

[gogolion]

I think the speed of the games involved are a big factor. I think basketball and hockey have the worst refs because they are the fastest games. When a player is driving to the hoop its tough to tell if he's actually been touched or not by the defender. Plus you have to be looking for traveling and other violations at the same time.

Baseball is much slower and more simple in that there is a lot less going on all at once.

 

[ILLINOISLION]

Tie between checkers and chess!

Seriously, it's a tie too between the six sports mentioned above. ALL can have the OCCASIONAL great game where you don't even notice the officials because they are so good. But the vast majority of games have several questionable calls and more and more can't even get the obviously wrong call corrected after having an opportunity to watch a video replay. THAT'S what's so bad.....when they still miss 1/3 or more of the terrible calls even after a replay.

 

[artsandletters]

Who voted for college basketball? Are you nuts?

 

[bjf1991]

IMO, it’s certainly not hockey and they don’t even know what a catch is so that rules out professional football. It surely isn’t college football as Ohio State and Michigan have a different set of rules than everyone else and I can put together a lengthy videotape of the unbelievably terrible calls against Penn State in both football and basketball. They dance and take so many steps that traveling is never called in basketball. That basically leaves baseball by default. To their credit, calls can now be challenged and reversed. Balls and strikes are still a different matter.

Don't watch any NBA....and very little non-PSU college hoops.

Which leaves me with MLB, NFL, NHL, and College FB.

MLB is the easiest sport to officiate.....aside from the guy calling balls-and-strikes, the others can go all day without a single close decision to make. The guys calling balls-and-strikes? Some are solid - but several are absolutely ludicrous (Buckner? among others)
So I can't even consider putting MLB at the top.

NHL is obviously - IMO - atrocious. Absolutely horrible. So they are out.

College football vs the NFL?

From what i see, I think the NFL guys actually do a very good job of OFFICIATING. From what I see the worst thing about the NFL is that the RULES that the on-field guys are mandated to interpret make the job 100 times more difficult (and occasionally head-scratching) than it should be - - - the catch/no catch, the personal foul hits, etc etc - - - but I think the on-field guys are usually pretty good.
And the NFL folks seem to be much more consistent than the college folks - - - where bizarre flags seem to occur with regularity - and "obvious" stuff is often overlooked.



So I'd go with NFL

 

[psu1969a]

Volleyball

 

[AWS1022]

Other than that, balls and strikes are different for each ump it seems, but as long as they're consistent.

As a coach, people saying this used to drive me nuts. I don't want the calls consistent, I want them right. If an ump is calling every pitch that is a foot outside a strike, it's consistent but it's still wrong. I would rather they make that wrong call once then fix it and get it right. Or someone will say that a certain ump doesn't give a high strike...well if it's a strike, he should. My son played baseball into college, so I've seen a lot of bad umpiring but I think MLB gets it right most of the time especially compared to officials in other sports and leagues.

 

[Steviedpsu]

I think the speed of the games involved are a big factor. I think basketball and hockey have the worst refs because they are the fastest games. When a player is driving to the hoop its tough to tell if he's actually been touched or not by the defender. Plus you have to be looking for traveling and other violations at the same time.

Baseball is much slower and more simple in that there is a lot less going on all at once.

Have you ever umpired a baseball game? Having an 80 mph fast ball coming at you and you have to judge the height and location of the pitch, or a curve ball? How about a play at first base where the throw is high so the fielder has to jump, swipe tag and you have to have your eyes in two places. You have to see the tag and the runner touching the base. I am not saying it is the hardest sport, I officiated baseball and basketball and both have their quirks. I am just stating that baseball is not necessarily slow and simple.

Given that, I prefer to officiate baseball over basketball. In basketball I make a call at one end and my partner(s) don't call it at the other end, I am going to hear it. In baseball I blow a call I am going to hear it, if my partner blows a call I had nothing to do with it.

 

[Steviedpsu]

As a coach, people saying this used to drive me nuts. I don't want the calls consistent, I want them right. If an ump is calling every pitch that is a foot outside a strike, it's consistent but it's still wrong. I would rather they make that wrong call once then fix it and get it right. Or someone will say that a certain ump doesn't give a high strike...well if it's a strike, he should. My son played baseball into college, so I've seen a lot of bad umpiring but I think MLB gets it right most of the time especially compared to officials in other sports and leagues.

You make a good point. You want it to be right AND consistent. I had a coach gripe to me that the plate guy needs to be more consistent. I said he is being consistent and he looked at me funny. So I said, I didn't say he was being consistently good, I just said he was being consistent! We laughed and moved on.

 

[kgilbert78]

I think the speed of the games involved are a big factor. I think basketball and hockey have the worst refs because they are the fastest games. When a player is driving to the hoop its tough to tell if he's actually been touched or not by the defender. Plus you have to be looking for traveling and other violations at the same time.

Baseball is much slower and more simple in that there is a lot less going on all at once.

I have always thought that this was a big issue in football officiating--especially in the secondary. The refs just cannot keep up. I'd love to see some younger, former college WRs and DBs, who have gone into a different profession, be trained and hired as refs.

 

[kgilbert78]

As a coach, people saying this used to drive me nuts. I don't want the calls consistent, I want them right. If an ump is calling every pitch that is a foot outside a strike, it's consistent but it's still wrong. I would rather they make that wrong call once then fix it and get it right. Or someone will say that a certain ump doesn't give a high strike...well if it's a strike, he should. My son played baseball into college, so I've seen a lot of bad umpiring but I think MLB gets it right most of the time especially compared to officials in other sports and leagues.

In soccer what drives me nuts is the inconsistency. Some guys like a more physical game and some are sticklers. Refs are human. What I really hated, though, was a ref who would call ticky tacky stuff one minute and then let it slide the next. You can adjust your game to the ref if he's consistent.

The other thing I hated (in a more than one ref situation--common in rec soccer) is when the guy furthest from the play would make a call over the guy standing right there. Saw more than a couple PK's called by the guy at the other end of the field.

Oh, and offside calls by guys who were too lazy to get into position. You even see that in the pros from time to time.

 

[Sviatoslav]

Tennis

 

[83wuzme]

Tennis

You can't be serious !

 

[Nittany.Lion]

Baseball is the worst. Home plate umps call 200+ pitches per game and are wrong about 25% of the time.