In recent weeks, fans of professional sports⎯and by fans I mean those who love the sport, not just one team or one character in it⎯have been hit by such a barrage of cheating and misconduct that they would be right to ponder the question: Is it worth my support? For thousands of years, abused lovers have tolerated bad behavior and cruelty when good sense tells them they should walk away. Should sports fans do the same?
Yesterday, one of the finest tennis players in the world demeaned herself in the U. S. Open with a profane outburst towards an official who called an infraction against her. Last week, an F1 racing team was accused of deliberately causing a crash to temporarily halt the racing and preserve the lead for one of their own team. Soccer had been plagued by accusations of diving to win free kicks and penalty-kicks, and Eduardo of Arsenal (yes, that one) has been suspended by UEFA for two matches for deceiving the referee. Every year the Tour de France hits the headlines as a new drug, new doping ruins the race. And the most outrageous of all comes from rugby, after the Harlequins club in England was punished for simulating a blood-letting injury (with fake blood, and/or perhaps the deliberate injuring of a player by a team doctor to produce blood) so that a teammate who had left the field could be allowed to return to take the all-important scoring kicks near the end of a match. No blood, no return, so let’s fake the injury.
What we think is real sport now imitates the pantomime of professional “wrestling”. And who’s to stop it?
Well, we are. The referees, assistants, line-judges, umpires, timers, fourth officials, TV referees, track judges, and the entire panoply of men and women appointed to ensure that any contests are played in accordance with the rules. The best shall win, not the best actor or deceiver. And what does that mean to us?
It means that we have to be above reproach; we have to be unimpeachable; we have to maintain the standards required by the law of the game, and the basic principles of being a judge, an arbiter, an adjudicator, someone independent of all the competitors. We shall have no conflict of interest when we officiate, and we, above all, must not cheat.
Let me make this discussion personal. Some of you may know that I have recently been appointed to evaluate officials at regional tournaments, in games in the Women’s Professional League, and in Major League Soccer as an In-Stadium Observer. I’m very pleased, because it means that the powers-that-be still have faith in my judgment, and believe that I can yet make a contribution to the development of officials, and do it outside the margins of this little blog.
But one official recently came to me concerned that my column here and my observations from the matches I have mentioned represent a conflict-of-interest that makes some officials a little nervous, or a little reluctant to have a complete and open discussion of incidents I might have witnessed in their games. They correctly ask whether their confidential remarks to me after a match might appear here on the internet.
Let me assure the readers and the referees that what passes between me (the assessor) and the officials, stays within the federation. If I use an incident in a game I evaluate to make a point in my blog, it will include no names of officials, no identification of a team. Only anonymity will come from my work on behalf of the federation.
Now, I’d be naïve to imagine that some dedicated sleuth might not be able to guess the name of an official or the name of a team if I describe an incident that caused controversy. Undoubtedly, that might happen. But I have leagues all round the world I can use to highlight the good, the bad and the ugly in officiating without hammering away at leagues here.
Goals not given; goals given but not scored; blatant dives; over-reaction by a fourth official in the last moments of a game; above-the-shoulder fouls not called. All these were from over-the-water, not from MLS. So be assured I can teach and comment without referring to our own officials. The Week In Review does it best, and every official in the country can see that material without reading this blog.
If I write about cheats, I will be careful not to join their ranks. It’s a policy I have maintained for many, many years, and I can recommend it to anyone.
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