This is the second of my two-part series on referees in the NLL. In part one, we talked about how referees have a thankless and difficult job. In addition to that, they have fans constantly complaining about the penalties they call or don’t call. Can they be inconsistent? Absolutely, but who isn’t? Do they make mistakes? Definitely, but who doesn’t? It seems that fans will not accept even the slightest error by an official. When was the last time you heard a fan say “Yeah, that was the wrong call, but hey, he’s only human”?

One of the biggest complaints about refs is that they are inconsistent, and I completely agree that this is a problem. Inconsistency can be a big problem in any sport, but honestly, I’ve never noticed NLL refs being any more inconsistent than officials in other sports. We’ve all seen an umpire that calls a high pitch a strike in the second inning and a ball in the seventh, but nobody pulls the old “All MLB umpires are incompetent and they should all be fired.” You also have to remember that there are two refs, so when they called Mr. Goon on your team for the hit from behind in the first quarter and then didn’t call Mr. 40-goal-scorer on the other team for a similar hit in the third, it may not have been the same ref. The one that called the first penalty may have been fifty feet away from the second, and the one that saw the second hit may not have seen the first and thought the second wasn’t a hit worth penalizing. Two different fans may disagree on what constitutes a clean hit from a dirty one, why wouldn’t two refs?

Another charge leveled at the refs is that they’re biased. Few, if any, refs in lacrosse can be completely unbiased. This is because very few people can be completely unbiased. The only way to make sure you have truly unbiased refs is to have people who DO NOT CARE who wins or loses, which means you need someone who doesn’t know the players or coaches personally, and has no history with any of them or any of the teams. But lacrosse is such a small community that this is pretty much impossible. People can overlook their personal relationships with players and I’m sure most officials in all sports do, but even so, the perception of bias will be there. Say a ref calls a crosschecking penalty against one player and ten minutes later does not call a penalty against another player for a similar hit. But if the ref and one of the players involved know each other from junior lacrosse or come from the same town or something, fans may believe that he has a bias against the first player or is a friend of the second. In actual fact, it could be that the ref just didn’t see the second hit, or from his vantage point the second hit was similar but clean. There’s pretty much no way around this. People are going to believe what they believe, sometimes in spite of the evidence. Refs are just going to have thick skins when it comes to fans accusing them of bias. And considering that in general the fans are actively rooting for one team over the other, having them accuse someone else of bias is just a touch ironic.

But some people go even further than that, and make accusations that the refs, or the league as a whole, have it out for a particular team or want a particular team to be successful. There is a huge difference between having inconsistent or biased refs and an organized conspiracy. Bias can be explicit – “I don’t like this guy so if he hits someone and and it’s even close to being illegal, I’m going to call a penalty on him” – or implicit, where a ref may call a penalty against a player because he has a history of bad behaviour, and so he’s not given the benefit of the doubt even if this decision isn’t conscious. The former needs to be eliminated, if it can be detected, but there’s not much that can be done about the latter.

A conspiracy, on the other hand, implies knowingly applying the rules and making judgment calls differently based on the team or player that the potential infraction is against. It would also mean that more than one ref must be involved in this, since a single ref consistently calling penalties against one team and not the other would be noticed (and likely questioned) by the other ref if he weren’t in on it. This kind of accusation is serious, and would call into question every game the refs being accused have ever worked. If such an accusation could be proven – that one or more refs conspired to penalize one team more or less heavily than the others – this would be the biggest scandal the league has ever seen. If it could be proven that the league itself was involved, it’s safe to say the NLL would finally be getting the front-page coverage they’ve been seeking for years – right before they fold. Sure, having a Colorado / Toronto final would be better for ratings and publicity than an Edmonton / Rochester final, but the risks to the league of trying to arrange something like this are just too great for such a scheme to even be considered. We have to assume that the league and refs are impartial (or as impartial as possible) and that any claim otherwise is infeasible. You’d need extraordinary evidence in order to make a case for such an extraordinary claim. I’ve heard many such claims but have never seen the slightest shred of actual evidence.

Many people reading these articles will simply brush me off as an NLL ref apologist. Some might wonder if I have a friend or relative who’s a ref. For the record, I don’t. And there is at least one NLL ref who I don’t particularly like. I find he tends to make a big show of some calls, as if he wants it to be about him, making sure everyone knows that he is in charge. As I said before, the best refs are the ones who do their job and fade into the background, not getting in the way unless it’s necessary.

Now I will admit that I may be totally off-base with some of this. Maybe I’ve been lucky and the refs I’ve seen are pretty good while the ones that play Philly and Rochester and out west aren’t as good. It’s possible that never having actually played lacrosse, I just don’t know bad reffing when I see it. Or maybe the overall talent level is not high but is fairly consistent, and I’m confusing that with “they’re all pretty good”.

Yes, there are always going to be bad calls by refs in lacrosse games. But if you don’t give in to confirmation bias, I suspect that in the long run you’ll find that just as many bad calls go against your team as against the other teams. This means that there is indeed a level playing field and so any biases, real or perceived, are eventually cancelled out. NLL games are decided by the players, not the refs.

Over the years, I’ve heard countless complaints about NLL refs. They’re incompetent, they’re inconsistent, they’re biased, and they just plain suck are the most popular. There are always going to be complaints about officials in all sports, but they’re generally about individuals or the reffing in a particular game or even on a particular play. In the NLL, it’s more general – it seems that it’s a generally agreed-upon “fact” that all NLL refs are terrible.

Quite honestly, I’m getting tired of hearing about it. After just about every game, you’ll see complaints on twitter or on various message boards that the refs affected the outcome, because of the one bad call that was made (frequently a judgment call that can’t be proven right or wrong), or because they didn’t just “let them play” (OMG, you mean they actually called penalties when rules were broken? Fire ’em all!), or because they did just “let them play”. Obviously there needs to be a balance between calling every “ticky-tack” rule violation and not calling anything unless limbs are removed, but for every call a ref may let go because it’s too minor, half the fans are going to yell because he let it go. For every call he does make, half the fans are yelling “You called that? He barely touched him!” I imagine that refs learn very early in their career that they simply can’t win so they have to do what they think is right and ignore people who yell at them.

I’m of the opinion that the majority of NLL refs are good at what they do, and that significant biases are few and far between. Mistakes are definitely made: mostly minor, occasionally egregious, sometimes completely baffling. But the number of times I’ve come out of an NLL game thinking that the refs had a significant effect on the outcome is pretty low. However, these complaints come up so often that they’re worth taking a look at.

I’ve broken this discussion up into two parts. The first part deals with the job itself and why fans often manage to convince themselves that the refs are terrible.

Few would argue that being an official in just about any league and in just about any sport is a thankless job. There’s a lot of stress and a lot of pressure, and while the players on each team have their fans, nobody comes to see the ref. Some fans will even applaud for a player on the opposing team if he makes a particularly good play, but regardless of how good a job he does, nobody applauds the ref. If you’re a ref that fades into the background and none of the fans know your name, you’re probably doing a good job.

In many sports refs have to run around almost as much as the players do, and lacrosse is no exception. In fact, since they don’t get to rest for 30 seconds while the play is at the other end of the floor, your average lacrosse ref may run around more than many of the players do over the course of a game. They have to be on the floor, running with the play, making sure to be in a position to watch everything but also making sure to stay out of the way, and making constant judgment calls for the entire 60 minutes.

I’d be interested to know just how many judgment calls they have to make in a game. Did that 100 mph shot ricochet off the post or the goalie’s shoulder? Was that a moving pick or were his feet planted, or was it incidental contact that should just be ignored? Was that a high hit that should be penalized, or a hit to the shoulder that slid up and accidentally made contact with the guy’s head? If the player wasn’t hurt, does it matter? I saw that same hit earlier in the game and called a penalty, but now it’s overtime, do I call it?

Considering all the hits, shots, changes of possession, shot clock resets, loose balls, face-offs, penalties, and goals, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few hundred judgment calls in each and every game. Many of them are minor and many of them are technically judgment calls but there was no real decision to be made. There are a lot of plays, however, where a actual judgment is required. But the fans don’t think about that. You get one of those few hundred judgment calls wrong, and you’re not very good. Two wrong and you’re incompetent. Three or more wrong and you are the worst official ever to set foot on the floor in any sport. Three mistakes out of three hundred judgment calls is a 1% failure rate. How many other industries can you get 99% of your decisions right and still have people booing you and talking about how completely useless you are?

So why is it that fans think the refs are so bad? Could they be hockey or field lacrosse refs who recently started working indoor lacrosse games. Maybe, though the field lacrosse connection is more likely to be a problem with refs from Colorado and Philadelphia, and less so in Edmonton and Toronto. Do they not know the rules? I suppose that’s possible, particularly with the field guys I mentioned. It’s also possible that these refs work the NLL, the MSL or WLA, and any number of junior and minor lacrosse leagues, all of which have slightly different rules. I sometimes run on autopilot and call my younger son by my older son’s name. Nobody thinks I don’t know his name, it’s just a minor “brain fart” which happens to everybody. If it can happen to parents with their children, arguably the most important thing in their lives, it can certainly happen to a ref who works part-time for three different lacrosse leagues.

We also have to consider that the refs are on the floor and see things differently than people in the stands or on TV. They don’t have the benefit of slow motion. They don’t get to watch the Jumbotron. They can’t see the entire floor at once. They may have a player or several players standing in their field of view. They have to move around to make sure they have the best view possible but when the ball moves at 100 mph, that’s not always possible. There are only two of them, watching twelve players. Believe it or not, they’re human and they make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes are going to come at crucial times and that’s unfortunate. But expecting 100% error-free officiating is simply not realistic.

A lot of fans go into a game already believing that the refs suck, and if they see one bad call (not even necessarily an incorrect call – just one that a fan disagrees with), they’ll call that proof of the ref’s incompetence. The other 299 correct calls go unnoticed. This is what’s called confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias occurs when you have a pre-existing belief (“refs suck”) and ignore evidence that contradicts it (the few hundred correct judgment calls) but remember evidence that confirms it (that one call you didn’t agree with). This is extremely common and happens to everyone, and is almost always unconscious and unintentional. But it happens. Ever get a “reading” done by a psychic? If you have, I guarantee that you remember the three or four guesses “predictions” she made that ended up being correct, but forget the fifty or so she made that were wrong. In this case, you walk into a lacrosse game thinking “So what are these incompetent refs going to screw up today?”, and walk out thinking “See? They called a penalty on Joe Awesomeguy for that crosscheck that was totally legal.” But you forget the challenge that the coach made that was overturned because the original call was correct. You forget the correct penalty call that led to your team’s power play goal. You forget the hundred loose ball calls and shot clock resets and such. And how many times have you heard home team fans yelling at the refs because they called an unfair penalty against the visiting team? Are you really complaining about their incompetence, or only when it disadvantages your team? Who’s really biased here?

In our second installment, we’ll expand on the concept of bias and talk about when fans accuse the refs of being biased – or worse.