I have coached soccer for 3 years now, but I have never officially refereed a soccer game. I coached Little League baseball years ago, but never officially umpired a game. I think that I would be pretty good at, it though. I mean I don’t think that I would miss many calls, and it would be fun. Well, fun except for having to deal with the players, coaches, fans, and parents.
To referee a sports event, whether it is Game 7 of the MLB World Series, or a local Parks and Recreation T-Ball game, takes talent, knowledge, and patience. It takes a special kind of person, in particular, to referee or umpire the youth leagues in our area.
Now don’t get me wrong, even with the enviable virtues mentioned above, even the best referee can make mistakes such as making a call the wrong way, or missing a “blatant” act that they should have seen.
But, as always, I have several options to this dilemma. A dilemma that I had no idea was as huge or widespread as it is until I recently talked to some players, fellow coaches, and parents.
“Refs are inconsistent,” another coach told me this week, “They are missing the most obvious calls, it’s right there in front of them and they don’t even call it. We need a meeting to review the rules with them.”
Now meetings, if you are from the South, is the answer to everything. Whether sports related, town hall rumors of scandal and intrigue, or a UMW Lord’s Acre Sale, we need a meeting. A meeting is a place to let everyone speak their mind, get their opinions and concerns off their chest, and then tell all other parties who disagree with you that they are wrong. Meetings are a wonderful waste of time.
Back to the inconsistency of refs. After thinking about what I heard of this atrocious state of our scholastic affairs, I knew that I must investigate further. So keeping with my tradition, I attended a meeting. Of course when a meeting is called it is rare that everyone called actually attends. Typically the same people with the same ideas attend the same meetings, so the outcome is generally the same. We reviewed the problem of referee inconsistency. Some people voiced their complaints, a few offered suggestions, and the majority kept quiet. I believe the outcome was that there needed to be another meeting to discuss this.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a solution to the issue at hand, and like any good solution, there are 2 variable outcomes for consideration. They are both guaranteed to create perfection in the art of game calling.
Option #1 Robotic Referees In this day and age of mechanical and technological advances, this may already be happening. In fact, it is possible that the NFL referees are actually robotic assimilations of great refs of days past. Put pinstripes and a hat on any halfway decently created robot and he looks like an NFL lineman. And when they stick their head in the black veiled instant replay booth, maybe they are not reviewing footage, but rather getting an electromagnetic decompulsion facial injection to keep their Duracell charged for a possibility of OT play. Or maybe they are conversing with the Mother Ship….No, I stand behind that if anything they are robotic and not alien. Any alien would have already annihilated the Bengals.
Taking this one step further would also dissipate fan/parent sideline refereeing. A good Terminator style robotic ref would be useful here. Dark shades, 30 inch biceps, leather pants, black t-shirt, 360 degree rotating head, x-ray vision to see through other players and make the right calls, and heat seeking gamma radiation fireballs released through his eye sockets aimed at anyone questioning his call would surely aid in this crisis that has encompassed us of inconsistent refereeing.
Option #2 No Referees Fire all referees now. Just let the players play and the fans make the calls. This is already been done in some European and South American countries for our version of soccer. When 10,000 crazed Scandinavians charge the field waving the flags of their country, the official referee is a mute point.
Of course no one related to the player can be involved in making a call involving his or her own kin. Please, no West VA jokes on this necessary rule.
Let’s try something new here.
This would cure the problem of inconsistent refereeing or umpiring, missed calls, and even the quietly whispered allegation of favoritism (or dislike) of certain coaches, none of which I even knew were issues. I have obviously spent too much time on teaching fundamentals, teamwork, and having fun and missed these critical issues of incompetence due to having human refs, who unlike some of us, sometimes err. Of course since there is more than one option to consider, we will be calling a meeting for you to attend. And remember, if you are unsure of which way to vote and you want the right sports answer, Go Ask Your Dad at
