"Haha, call the game balanced... that's fresh."

I made myself a promise before both NBA Conference Finals series began – do not get caught up in the officiating blame game. Right off the bat, with the Boston Celtics down 2-0 to the Miami Heat, I had a daunting task of getting through hundreds of Tweets and Facebook statuses during each game, as people blamed the officials for bad plays and terrible calls. My refuge was the incredible Western Conference Finals, of which I expected solid, entertaining basketball to define the series.

For the most part, that was true. But even last night, as the Oklahoma City Thunder procured the misery of Seattle sports fans with the Western Conference title, the refs couldn’t escape the blame, which is sad because this series was an instant classic. Most notably, it was that unlovable old curmudgeon Joey Crawford who once again set the gold standard. If you’re unfamiliar with Crawford, he is, more than likely, the worst official in all of sports.

That’s a bold claim, I know, because I watch baseball more than anything and Joe West is horrendous. But you can’t watch a single game that Crawford officiates without throwing your hands in the air and saying, “What the f*ck!” at least once. And if the NBA wanted to shed the stigma of being a rigged league with the dirtiest refs, David Stern would fire Crawford. It’s not like Stern hasn’t recognized how awful Crawford is in the past.

In the meantime, I want to celebrate the absolute worst thing about a sport that I love so much with this small sampling of his finest/most horrendous career moments. (Add your favorite omissions in the comments because God knows there are hundreds more.)

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I’m not one for conspiracy theories, especially when it comes to sports. The effort it would take to orchestrate a fix on an institutional level, combined with the cover-up afterwards to keep everybody quiet, would be monumental. All it takes is one person looking to cash in on a salacious story and the whole house of cards would come tumbling down. And for what? To advance one team one round in a tournament? You’re going to risk the integrity of your entire sport for that? It’s just not worth it.

BUT, I am one to point out a horribly blown call, especially when it prevents something potentially awesome from happening. Something, for example, like a 16-seed upsetting a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament. That’s why I’ve helpfully screencapped this moment from yesterday’s Syracuse vs. UNC-Asheville game. With about 30 seconds left, and a 66-63 lead, Syracuse was inbounding the ball from under their own basket, and the ball clearly bounced off one of their player’s hands before going out of bounds. Despite this, they were awarded possession, and promptly locked the game up with free throws.

Now, you could certainly point out that there was a pretty obvious foul committed by the UNC-Asheville player on the play, but that is besides the point for our purposes. If the referee wasn’t going to call the foul, for whatever reason, then the play needed to be treated like the foul didn’t happen. The point is that, during a live play, the ball went out of bounds after touching a Syracuse player, and the referee blew the call. Saying “Yeah, but if the foul would have been called …” gets us nowhere because, to quote the lead singer of the band Crucial Taunt, if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hops.

The main reason I’m so upset about this is because it cost us something so potentially cool. A 16-seed has never upset a 1-seed, and it was *thisclose* to happening yesterday. There’s no guarantee that UNC-Asheville would have hit a tying three, or even cut the lead to one with a quick basket, but it would have been a blast to watch them try. Hell, maybe they would have just thrown the ball right to Syracuse, tripped over their shoelaces in unison, and flubbed the game away anyway, but at least then they would have done it on their own. It’s tough enough for David to take out Goliath as it is. Goliath doesn’t need a crowbar.

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entertaining football referee at TC Wolverines vs Corona youth football game

That … sort of describes it.

I also would’ve went with “weirdly muscular guy blows whistle and points indiscriminately while football players try to figure out what the hell is going on”. Something about his shorts make me uncomfortable. And yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing worse than super muscular people who have no reason to be, like when Carlton on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was suddenly jacked out of his mind.

Not much is known about this video (so I can’t answer the major questions, like “why is this guy doing this”, “who put one of the Village People in charge of high school football” or “are any of these calls accurate”), but it’s nice to occasionally report a story that reads “man makes youth sports fun” rather than “man makes kids work out in heat until they die” or “coach whips out his business at a Burger King”.

[h/t Guyism]

The NFL has named its officials for Super Bowl XLV, and normally that wouldn’t be such a big deal. But Walt Anderson, who will referee the Big Game for the first time after 15 seasons in stripes, is a dude who deserves mention for commitment to his craft. Anderson was a former dentist in Texas, a profession that he gave up in order to accept the call to the NFL (my emphasis added):

“My company (Anderson Dental in Sugar Land) was a big group practice, with 45 employees and 13 doctors,” he said. “I realized there was no way I could do justice to both, so I sold the practice. If I was going to have the opportunity to be an NFL referee, I wanted to do it in what I felt was the right way.”

The “right way” takes time and equipment. Some might try to scrape by with, say, a satellite dish, a few cable boxes and four VCRs; Anderson has four dishes, each linked to a TiVo hard-disc recorder, eight VCRs and a computer with video-editing capability.

“A lot of the guys kid Mike Pereira (the NFL’s director of officiating) that `Walt’s got better equipment than you do,’ ” Anderson said, laughing.

–Houston Chronicle [2005]

I always laugh when I hear about how NFL officials are “part-time,” because their weekly workload is a helluva lot more than 40 hours.

“It probably takes me a good eight to 10 hours between the TV tape and coaching tape to go through my own game,” Anderson said. “Between last week’s game and next week’s game, I’ve probably got 25 hours a week of film study. I also tape four to five other games every week and go through those games and pick up unusual plays that the crew can benefit from.”

That Chronicle piece is old, but worth a read if you’re interested in the life of an NFL official. Anderson is heading a so-called “all star” crew, meaning that the seven officials are the ones that pulled the best grades for their regular season assignments. Oh, and they haven’t worked together all season. This can only end well.

Last week, NHL referee Chris Rooney became Internet famous for all the wrong reasons, after his voice cracked while he was calling off a goal during a game between the Carolina Hurricanes and the New York Islanders. And to make matters worse for the guy, he was touching his crotch while he did it. I like to think he was just giving the ladies a little something special.

But because the Internet is a wonderful place filled with diabolical geniuses, it didn’t take long for someone to edit the clip with a Simpsons clip of the squeaky-voiced teenager. After the jump, I’ve got the original and the remix for your crotch-grabbing, puberty joke enjoyment…

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While the San Diego Chargers were busy thrashing the San Francisco 49ers 34-7 last night, Niners defensive tackle Justin Smith got into a bit of a verbal bout with Chargers tight end Randy McMichael. As the two exchanged words in the second quarter, referee Garth DeFelice stepped in to break it up, when Smith unleashed a thousand furies upon him. Or he pushed his arm away.

DeFelice didn’t take too kindly to Smith’s response and he immediately ejected him from the game for making illegal contact with an official. Legal contact, of course, is a gentle nude embrace followed by breakfast. Of the fiery DeFelice, one announcer said:

“This guy right here, that’s Garth DeFelice and he’s one of the toughest umpires in the National Football League.”

I think that marks the first time that a NFL announcer used the “This guy right here” on a non-player. Finally, a breakthrough. As for Smith’s take on the ruling, he seems to be fine with it. Or at least he understands it…

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