Quote:
Originally Posted by ReaperGoat
now, from my personal experience, in the MLB/NFL/NBA/NHL/etc. that the calls are pretty much the same in every game, every season. there's no reason for any bias, and there's rigorous ladders to climb to be an official at that level. the most that officiating in sports will stray is in college sports, especially in bowl games, where the officials will be from another conference, and will show bias towards one team or the other.
you can't really draw analogies between the refs for FIRST and for sporting events, because the situation is entirely different. there's no way in first you can call a timeout in the middle of the match to debate every call that's made (like in the NFL with the challenge flag, or in the MLB, or the NBA). we also don't have the time to go back and watch a replay to reverse a decision. like others have said before me, Refs are human. they make mistakes. sure it's really frustrating to have to sit and watch some of the calls that are (or aren't) made, and not be able to do much about it, but there's got to be something we can do to make it better for future seasons.
my $0.02
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Another factor, mentioned by Mark Leon at SVR: In "professional sports", these games have been played for decades or in most cases more than a century, and, essentially, everything has happened. In FIRST, the game has been played at a maximum of 6 weeks, and many refs have probably not seen the game at all before it starts. And then of course there's the whole volunteer factor...