Professional Refs/Umps are Retarded

Over the last couple of weeks, two of the biggest stories in the sporting world have been about the people that are supposed to be invisible: the refs. Instead of being in the background like they should be, they have been in the news because 1) the NBA refs went on strike, and 2) the refs (or they call themselves) in the MLB seem unable to make the simplest calls. Because of this, I am going to spend this entire post just verbally bashing both.

Let's first discuss the NBA referees going on strike. Do they not realize how bad they are? Like, I don't know what the qualification for being an NBA ref is, but it certainly doesn't have anything to do with calling a travel or carry, because they call so few of them, you'd think they didn't know what one was. I have refereed basketball for seven years now, so I am completely qualified in saying that I'm definitely better then everyone of them. In fact, they are so bad, that when I started training, the very first thing my trainer said was "don't look at the refs in the NBA because they are lazy and just terrible." After hearing that, does it sound like a group of people that will be missed if they were to go on strike. If Reagan was able to replace air-traffic controllers, refs have no hope. There is a reason people aren't bashing the replacement refs...they may suck, but not more than the originals.

MLB umpires truly take the cake though. How sad is it that umpires have been having their own press conferences to discuss the calls they blew? I wasn't ever a fan of instant replay in baseball because its already so slow, but now, I'm so for it because the umps are just ridiculously bad. Did you know that baseball video games have a feature that lets the digital umpires blow calls every once in a while so its more realistic? I'm not making that up.

The point of umpires and referees is to unbiasedly enforce the rules; they are supposed to be the eyes of the rule book if you will. There will always be some human error in the process, but not anything that would call attention to themselves. I shouldn't know the names of any of them, yet I do. If this trend continues, we could be just five years or so from robot officials.