Official Treatment
March 7, 2014
A book I quoted in this space three times last November – How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything by Dov Seidman – has me thinking about sports officiating.
One premise of the book is that the Internet era has made the world so transparent and connected that there is no such thing anymore as “private” behavior or a “minor” mistake. Everything can become a public matter – instantly. Anything can become a major problem – overnight. Worldwide.
So, when our local real estate agent, who officiates junior varsity basketball, misses a call that an invested spectator captures with his or her smart phone camera, and sends to his or her relatives and a local media outlet that night, there is no limit to where that video could appear by the next morning.
And while major college and professional officials may now receive four-figure fees to work under those conditions, officials at the junior high/middle school and high school levels – sometimes working for little more than gas money - wonder if it’s worth the hassle.
There are many obstacles to recruiting and retaining officials for school sports, including poor business practices by assigners and bad sportsmanship by coaches and spectators; but a significant factor not to be overlooked is the adverse potential of immediate worldwide criticism for a call that had to be made in the blink of an eye.
The human factor of sports is now subject to inhuman expectations. In an enterprise that strives for fairness, it appears that it’s the official who is being treated least fairly.
News Unfiltered
July 12, 2017
During the first summer after my college graduation, I was the campaign advance man outside of the Milwaukee and Madison areas for a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin. A great job.
Sometime during that summer, I met the head of the campaign in a café. He was reading a newspaper as I arrived; and as I sat down at the table, I asked him what he was reading. I’ll always remember his response. He said, “I’m looking for what could go wrong today?”
It was the campaign manager’s job to think about worst-case scenarios and consider how the campaign might get taken off message by the news of the day.
I was young and impressionable, and I soon began to consume the daily news through the same filter.
It was not difficult to do so in the 1970s. The daily newspaper was printed and delivered to my door every day. Television had just three networks, and each provided brief news reports two or three times a day.
Today, what passes as news comes from hundreds or thousands or millions of sources and it is changing constantly, 24/7/365. Only a small portion of those sources is professionally operated with accountability for the substance and/or style of the so-called reporting.
Today it drives me nuts to consume news – that is, to really think about what I’m reading or hearing the way I did in the 1970s. Today, meaningful matters often get buried in trivia while the most inane and inaccurate stories and comments can go viral overnight.
I’ve always said you can get too much of a good thing – too much food; too much free time; and certainly, too much sports. And clearly, we have too much “news” about sports.