Sport most difficult to officiate (referee, judge, umpire, etc.)?

Basketball. Too many calls are judgement calls and the game is officiated so differently than the actual rules allow.

Also, the players are so fast and strong, its hard to see the contact and play in real time.

The fact that the rules are set up in a way and the calls are so much based on judgement leaves it open for players to be officiated differently based on star power as well.

 

i call american football. you have a lot of help out there, and yet it's still incredibly difficult to see things like holding, pass interference, rule a catch (possession and the ball not moving when you hit the ground), breaking an imaginary plane for a score, and good lord--spotting the freaking ball on every single play!

such a fundamental part of the game--gaining 10 yards to make a 1st down. And they come in and spot the ball somewhere...sometimes a foot off, sometimes a yard off..determining where forward progress stopped, etc.. 1 foot multiple times a game plus 1 yard a couple of times a game--that can make a huge difference. And yet it's their call. Sometimes it's the difference between a 3rd and 3 pass and a 3rd and 2 run. Or a 4th and 2 punt or a 4th and 1 go for it.

Then you add in the illegal contact in the secondary, offensive pass interference with picks (whereas the "semi-picks" aren't called).. fumbles and getting to the bottom of the pile to determine who actually gained possession and whether the ball was loose before hitting the ground.




I'll shut up. that's my pick

 

agree with soccer, huge field so the refs need to be in good shape, too many players to keep track of and field vision aren't always great. i was under the impression they have the option to review tapes?

MMA i would say is hard too, stop too early, fighters and fans get pissed and you might have just screwed someone's ranking/career (UFC have clause where you lose 2 consecutive fights you are out). telling fighters to breakup even though they are probably jockeying for dominant position. Stop too late someone gets seriously injured/possibility of death, or when fighters refuse to tap you have to wait for them to pass out...

 

tennis actually isn't that hard. You have 1 line to keep track of for the most part, and you have the help of "the eye in the sky" (chair ump) to overrule..

(I'm not taking into account replay since the rules aren't the same everywhere)

 

I have been both a line judge and ref in soccer and had no problem doing it. The higher the level the more difficult it gets, but if you really rely on your line judges you should be fine. Plus most all of the penalties have to do with where the ball is... if you can follow the ball you can do a pretty good job.

Football on the other hand is a nightmare.. why do you think they have so many of them on the field?

Basketball is second for me.

 

I'm voting "other" primarily because I am a Judo referee and coach and also was a Judo competitor who played on both the national and international level.

Even though I love Judo I personally think there is a huge problem that more scores and penalties are completely subjective, that is even acknowledged in the Judo rules. Because of that you can get very divergent results depending on who is the ref and also changes the strategy.

For example we had a local Judo tournament last week and I was the ref on one mat and there was another ref on the other. I tend to be a much stricter scorer on throws where as most other refs are much looser. I also tend to allow ground work (pins and submissions) to continue more than other refs. So depending on what ref you got you might not even bother with ground work since you know the other ref isn't going to give you time to execute.

I will admit that I have a bias but it is one that is allowable under the rules given the latitude of interpretation. That is a problem with the sport since it allows the refs to be more than just someone to police infractions but whose opinion determines who wins.

I think that problem applies even greater to sports such as gymnastics, figure skating and diving. Any sport where you don't just referee but actually judge the performance. In all of those cases subjectivity determines the outcome.

 

I'm going with diving. I have no clue how it is judged. I'll see two people do the exact same dive, both almost perfectly, and the judges will rip one and reward the other. So it's either completely arbitrary, or the judges must be the most observant people in the world.

 

I agree there is a certain amount of subjectivity to MMA and any combative sport regarding when you stop a fight. I've never referreed an MMA match but have done it and generally you need to learn to tell when a fighter can't continue and is helpless. I don't know whether most MMA refs are also players or former players but if they aren't it should be mandatory that they are so they learn to recognize when a fight is over.

 

boxing is pretty hard sometimes.

 

Different associations have different rules but off the top of my head I recall that UFC scores primarily on submission and TKO (when one player can't defend themselves anymore). Strikes landed are scored like in boxing and their is scoring for take downs. Like boxing there are three judges that score the match when it isn't a submission or TKO.

Regarding the rules on what is prohibited I believe crotch strikes, throat strikes, fish hooks, eye gauges, finger locks, weapons and bites are prohibitted otherwise everything else goes.