Unfair treatment!

I have been a USTA (Tennis) official for several years. I have had the privilege of officiating matches, which included many great players, including John McEnroe and Andy Roddick. I once had a 130-mile an hour serves from Roddick that he disagreed with my call. Replay showed
I was right (about a 1/8th an inch…). How did I do that? Training… Lots of it…

Through the years, I have yet to be so accurate; I have made mistakes. There are days I have felt ill but had to officiate anyway, as no sub was available. Did I do well? I will argue I did as well as Randy Moss and Tom Brady if they were playing with a 101-degree fever…

I have to live with those mistakes. Officiating is a different animal. Once, when I was on my way out to officiate a McEnroe match, the head official gave us a motivational speech. He said something I will never forget: " You are expected to be 100% perfect out there, and you are expected to improve on that!" That is how society looks at officials.

Over the years, I have become more hardened to accept that perfection expectation. We have so much press about Ed Hochuli's acknowledgment that he erred on a call late in Sunday's San Diego-Denver game a few weeks ago. He is human; god forbids this from an official.

What irritates me is that we are in a society that constantly looks for an easy person to blame for a loss, failure, or other negative aspect of life. Did the official make a mistake that genuinely cost the San Diego Chargers the game? I argue, not really.

How can I say that? I watched most of that game. If we hold officials to one apparent mistake, we should be banned. We should ban several receivers from ever playing football again for dropping a pass right in their arms. We must ban many defensive players for missing what seemed to be an easy tackle. We need to ban the offensive players who negated a significant gain because they grabbed onto a defensive player and threw them to the ground. But those are just forgiven as issues in a stressful situation by a player who makes $10 million a year. But the official who makes $80,000 a year better not make one little mistake, which means a death sentence.

In baseball, should we ban the outfield who drops an easy-fly ball? What about a hockey player who missed an open net shot? Let's not even discuss the number of botch open lane lay-ups I have seen in Basketball. Hey, we have all seen dunks missed…

But we would never say such a thing. The San Diego Chargers made many more mistakes, which cost them the game… Did the official goof up in that game? Yes, but he is the only one people want to fire, harm, or ridicule. What I find most interesting in all my years of officiating
(Baseball for 9 years before tennis) is that the people who bitch the most have never officiated a high-level game or match. If they did, they would understand that officiating is a high-level stress job, which it takes a sick person to enjoy… I also have seen a significant shortage of officials in all sports… Many great officials have left the profession due to one or two mistakes and significant backlash. If I were Ed Hochuli, I would retire, and the NFL would lose another quality official, but I would still have all those players who goofed up many times throughout the game! But he, as well as I, keep officiating through the name-calling and threats… We must be sick?

That could explain why I want to run 100 miles.

Carry on…