A rant on basketball officiating

Okay, so there's more on the Sean Taylor incident that I would love to cover today, but I feel like if I stayed on the same story for a 3rd straight day, I'd have to award myself my own prize for overblown coverage of a story. Not that Taylor's death is a non-story, but I'm a simple, one post a day kind of a guy, so sitting on one and only one topic for 3 days in a row would be overdoing it, especially given the lack of real developments since my last post. So we're taking a break, though I reserve the right to come back to it as there are new developments.

Anyhow, I was back over at the alma mater last night, taking in the Lady Falcons basketball team and their game with traditional regional and national power Scranton. Messiah is fielding what, in my opinion, is probably their best team ever this year, and entered the game sporting a perfect 3-0 record and ranked 3rd in the nation. The Lady Falcons also came with an 0-9 all-time record against the Monarchs of Scranton, so by any measure this was a pretty big game for Messiah. To make a long story short, Messiah was led by 27 points from returning D-III First Team All-American guard Nikki Lobach and defeated Scranton 61-53, notching that elusive first ever win against the Lady Monarchs.

So, once again, go Falcons! However, that's not really the point of this entry, I just wanted to brag on the Falcons again before I got going. From my vantage point, the officiating in the game was absolutely atrocious. And this does not come from a place of bitterness. First of all, my team won the game, so why would I be bitter? And secondly, as is the case 99% of the time I come away critical of the referees in a given game, I felt they were equally bad to both teams. The even number of fouls and free throw attempts in the game bear that out. The referees, in my opinion, definitely impacted the game, but did not have a meaningful effect on the outcome of the game. Very early in the game, a Scranton player got pretty well decked taking a jumper right in between two refs, with no call, and that just set the stage for what was to come. Coaches, players, and fans of both teams were justifiably exasperated with the officials on numerous occasions throughout the game. Of course, coaches, players and fans of both teams were also unjustifiably exasperated with the officials on numerous occasions throughout the game as well, but that's to be expected because we aren't exactly dealing with neutral observers here.

Now, admittedly, this was a D-III women's game, so you aren't expecting an all-star officiating crew. But this game was a textbook example of the kind of poor officiating that I think has become epidemic at virtually all levels of basketball. I could go on a long diatribe about the refs themselves, but I think it would be misguided, because I don't really put most of the blame on the actual officials. I think the rules of basketball have been allowed to evolve to a point that the game has become virtually impossible to call consistently and fairly.

I'm not terribly old, so I don't have a ton of basketball history to look back on, but my understanding, and recollection from the earliest games I watched, is that basketball used to be a fully non-contact sport. So, if you were defending someone and you bumped them, pushed them, or whatever, you were whistled for a foul. A referee simply had to determine if contact was made on a play, nothing more. Obviously there were questions of offensive fouls, who had position, and the like, but these were not inherently judgement calls. If you saw the play accurately, the right call was clear. Over time, the rules of basketball have evolved to allow for contact, as long as that contact does not create an advantage for the person initiating the contact. Now, I tend to be fairly progressive when it comes to sports - I'm all for change if it makes the game better. This change has clearly not done so in my opinion, because now you are asking officials to not only determine if contact was made, but if that contact created an advantage. What constitutes an advantage is highly subjective, and thus you have referees being asked to make a lot more split second judgment calls. This is not a good idea, from my perspective, and I think the end result on the floor in most games supports my opinion. Re-simplify the task of officiating, and you'll get better officiating.

I'm a realist, and I know we aren't going back anytime soon, but every so often I just need to rant about this sort of thing. Thank you for bearing with me in that effort.