Updated Aug 15, 2024, 12:51pm EDT
In sports there are clear rules, what is in bounds and what is out. However, much of the job of a referee, judge or umpire is subjective. As I mentioned in my last post Why We Need Umpires, Referees and Judges, that is coaches and managers have the opportunity to challenge, except in a few circumstances. Those are called unchallengeable or unreviewable. I believe those come in the circumstance where the call made on the field or court is purely subjective. Was the foul so egregious that it should be penalized more severely. Is it pass interference? Should the foul be a technical foul? Should it be a yellow card or a red? AND then there is in a very small niche area of sports, like diving or gymnastics where mostly everything is about the sport is subjective.
Either way scores are given. In baseball runs are scored , in soccer, there are goals and in football touchdowns are the goal. In most sports winning is achieved by means of a score or a speed or a height. Most sports have a means for measuring success and failure. Sometimes they don’t even make sense. Tennis has Love, 15 30 and 40. (It was originally Love 15, 30, 45 because the sport had no time frame and it was a reference to the clock.) Today we will often see the duration of a match on the scoreboard. (For more on the role of the clock in sports see my blog post called “Stopping the Clock.”) Football, has an extra point, a safety + 2 points, a field goal + 3 points and a touchdown +6 points. Basketball has three point shots, 2 point shots, 1 point field goals. (Not to be confused with field goals in football which is 3 points. Goals in soccer and hockey are always 1 point. Then of course there are individual statistics for all athletes. There are first serve percentage, numbers of rebounds, assists and points, number of tournaments won, number of downs played or number of sacks.
(I have always found it funny that a lineman in football can average 2 and a half sacks per game. It is because it is an individual stat that is shared by two people.)
Sports can be quantified in ways that real life doesn’t always measure up. Whether we work on a team or individually, we don’t always get compensated based on our own personal value. Athletes can deman million dollar salaries because they are quantifiably better than other athletes. And those achievements are called stats and for the most part we can see them in black and white. Of course, coaches and managers do rely on what they call intangibles, which cannot be measured such as being a leader in the locker room and on the field. Sometimes they have the ability to put the team on their shoulders and overachieve when their team is lackluster. Maybe they can play more than one position or are a role model to teammates.
There are of course sports in general that rely on subjective perspective.
I’m sure the judges would disagree but maybe that is why they are called judges (because it is up to their judgment) not referees. Maybe to the judges it is not subjective, however, I know when I am watching diving the only slight difference I can see is how big a splash there is.
Like all spectators, I armchair quarterback. I regularly see things differently or as when I watch sports see things that are completely overlooked by the officials. Along with wondering why coaches or managers make the choices or questioning an athlete’s bumblehead decision, I regularly wonder how the official could get “it” so wrong.
Recently , while attending a Rockland Boulders baseball game I saw a man wearing a shirt that said “I am an umpire.” Clearly it was a gift from a friend who attended baseball games with him in the past because he had a very loud commentary on every play, almost every call in the game. At one point it was not clear whether the ball had skipped into the catcher’s glove or it was caught cleanly. My unprofessional umpire behind started yelling “ask for help.” He didn’t mean check the replay, he meant, ask another umpire what his perspective was on the play. He kept screaming “get it right.” “The most important thing is to get the call right.” He was saying something very simple. Life isn’t always fair so at least in the fantasy of sport, maybe that is where the outcome can always be just.
The problem is, sports don’t work that way and we as spectators are often left less satisfied than we hoped. Sometimes the spectator watches sport because it is an escape from reality and then realizes it is just a microcosm of reality. We want a judge to make the right call.
This past summer we saw one example of such a subjective heartbreaking moment in the world of gymnastics.
An article from Forbes.com sums up the circumstances well. PARIS, FRANCE – AUGUST 5:
Olympic gymnast Jordan Chiles is at the center of controversy surrounding the bronze medal she was awarded for the floor exercise individual final at the Paris Olympics.
Chiles’ was awarded the bronze after an inquiry in scoring adjusted an error that had her score lower than it should have been. The judges upheld the inquiry, and Chiles’ went on to the medal ceremony where she was part of the iconic photo with Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade, the silver and gold medal winners.
Days later, her medal status came into question again after Romanian team officials protested, with the argument the U.S. team filed an inquiry about Chiles’ score too late, four seconds after the allotted time frame for disputes. An independent court agreed, the U.S. team inquiry came late, reducing Chiles’ score. As a result, Romania’s Ana Barbosu was awarded the bronze. Chiles’ was asked to return the bronze medal.
Watching the event unfold in real time was horrible. Elation, devastation, tears of joy and tears of agony back and forth. I’m not sure why they couldn’t both just get a bronze medal. After all, there is precedent for giving out more than one. In fact, at the summer Olympics it has happened 126 times and in the winter Olympics it has occurred 30 times. We love a photo finish where we have to blow up the image to see actually who came in first and we loathe the mentality of everyone gets a trophy. Yet there is something in between.
One final word, in sports it is great to keep score. It lets you know how you are doing compared to others. It is not great to keep score in real life and know that how much money you make is a poor way of keeping score. Keeping score in real life will more often leave you disappointed and will rob you of real joy no matter whether or not you think you have won.