Paul,
Your comment about officials doing a mea culpa, and learning from it, are too far and few between. Too many officials in a number of sports have become too involved with the games outcome. Everyone makes mistakes. We are all human. However, I’d welcome the day where an official gives an interview to a major sports news outlet, saying “I screwed up. I’m sorry, and I’ll learn from it”. How refreshing that would be!
Some officials make themselves part of the game, which is detrimental. To me, the best officials are the ones you never notice, unless it’s for positive reasons, like chatting up a kid, a few laughs with fans or players, charity work, etc. I can’t tell you many sports games where officials have determined the outcome of a game, where a call that was minuscule at best, and let go all game long, suddenly becomes an infraction, with a couple minutes in the game. The optics are horrible, and the integrity of the game get called into question. And, that should never happen. |