Soon after the end of the 2006-2007 National Basketball Association (NBA) season, a scandal broke out. No player fought dogs, attacked strippers or took steroids: NBA Referee Tim Donaghy turned himself in to the FBI because he was caught changing calls to alter the outcome of the game. While NBA Commissioner David Stern has called this an isolated incident, it still makes you distrust both the quality of referees and the authenticity of the game.
Each bad call can no longer be perceived as a mere mistake, but may be an active decision with ulterior motives. These concerns are prevalent not only in professional leagues, but also in college and high school sports.
Though the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) may not have corrupt referees, it does have incompetent officiating. “While they try very hard, they are not professional enough,” said junior Nolan Becker, member of the varsity basketball and baseball teams. In a baseball playoff game his freshman year, the umpire “changed a call when it was illegal to be changed,” he said.
Junior varsity baseball and football player Nick Wheatley-Schaller said last season “there was a 20-minute argument between the two coaches and the ump, because the ump didn’t know the ground rules for where we were playing and they wound up having to call a PSAL official to get a call.”
Though both games were delayed, the officials ended up making the correct call. But the underlying problem had yet to be resolved: the PSAL does not have a large enough pool of officials to hold them to the same standards as those in professional leagues.
A sport’s assignor sends referees to games. When there are not enough referees, however, the assignors do not have the leisure of considering the referee evaluations coaches fill out after each game when making assignments. Even though the referees go through pre-season clinics just as coaches do, bad referees do not improve either their eyesight or impartiality if there is no incentive to do so.
This can be changed if more qualified people are recruited into the profession. One way to do this is by raising salaries. Football referees who officiate both a junior varsity and varsity game each week for the entire 10-week season make a paltry $1,750. Referees of other team sports make even less per game. Increased salaries would increase the appeal for these jobs, allowing assignors to select the top-performing referees, thus improving the overall quality of high school athletics.
There should also be a more selective screening process. While the officiating crew is required to attend preseason sessions with the coaches to learn the rules of the game better, there is no test to truly determine how much they learned. Perhaps a screening exam could be implemented. There would be separate tests for each respective sport which each referee or umpire would have to pass in order to maintain their officiating status. This would help to weed out incompetent and unknowledgeable referees.
Referees may be far from perfect but are a necessary element of sports events. Increasing the pool of referees to choose from and their knowledge of the sport will hopefully improve the quality of officiating.