I see a lot of bitching (mostly NHL now) about blown calls or bad calls or shitty calls or however you want to phrase it.

has anyone ever actually done any officiating here? I used to ref our deck hockey games (only in leagues i didnt participate i didnt want anyone saying the fix was in) and i have to tell you, that shit is hard, yo

its easy as fans watching on TV to complain about a bad or a missed call (i know i do) but we have the benefit of replay to show us over and over and over again that it was a wrong call. but in real life, heat of the moment, you have less than a second to make what you think is the fair call. sports such as baseball, meh, not so much, since you are allowed to judge whats a strike or a ball (and each ump has their "own" strikezone). but in your faster paced sports, such as snail racing, paint drying, hockey, football and basketball, the athletes move so damn fast you are going to make mistakes, no matter who you are, whether you have been doing this for 20 years or 20 seconds.

a ref is not going to be able to see everything at every time

Did you just refer to football as a fast paced sport? There's at least as much sitting doing nothing in football as there is in baseball. I kind of agree about the strike zone comment (although it is hard to be consistent with the ball dodging, ducking, dipping, diving and dodging the way it does. But have you ever seen a close play at first base? That kind of play happens dozens of times every game, and even though they touch at almost the exact same time the umps rarely get it wrong.

I initially get mad at the ref for a bad call, but I do understand how difficult it is. The only thing that angers me even after have time to calm down is when you can see the ref is watching the play happen and makes the wrong call on a blatant play (see Kerry Fraser vs. Gretzky high stick ).

yes, football is a bit fast paced, once the ball is snapped, but there arent too many penalties called when the ball is dead, off the top of my head, false start, too many men in the huddle, excessive celebration and maybe when someone is line up wrong formation, but the actual play, bumping the reciever past 5, holding, tripping, face guarding etc, are pretty tough to call in a split second. certainly football is probably the least of the hardest to ref of the four major american sports, but still some times they do blow a call

How many refs are there?

These are the referees in American football:

Referee (1)
Umpire (1)
Head Liensman (1)
Line Judge (1)
Field Judge (1)
Side Judge (1)
Back Judge (1)
Total (7)

Yeah, that's enough to catch most of what's going on.

Inconsistency is pretty much what bugs me.

Wow, I've been referee in our football "soccer" a couple of times as a replacement and I was on my own on the pitch. The absurd shit you get shouted at you for not seeing everything as they see it (which is often wrong anyway) is incredible. "They'" being players from one team, players from other team, coaches, substitutes, parents, other spectators, ... I would never want to be a ref. Much respect for them.

Not really, they're two completely different games. Baseball umps also have the advantage of the players being much more spread out. A typical football play is going to involve several guys in the space of a few square yards. This rarely happens in baseball.

homies just don't understand, yo

I know football is harder to call, but 98% of the game is people standing around.

Yes?

I have reffed some basketball games, just kid's leagues, back when I was in high school. Even for kids, that is insanely hard sport to officiate. I try to remind myself of that when watching games.

I've umpired little league, babe ruth league, and minor league. I also did girls softball. Some of it was difficult and some of it was easy. I found that calling games behind the plate was much easier than being in the field. Close plays at first base were the most difficult. If they were extremely close I would just guess, basically. Also, being in the field is boring and you lose interest in the game. I was called on a few times when the umpire behind the plate forgot the count and I had no clue what the count was. In softball if the play or call was close I would give it to the cuter girl.

Fkkin' HUGENIUS

No. It's really not.

Catching stuff and Ignoring stuff are two different things

Whatever, I hate football.

Could have fooled me