I don’t think that this relates as much to Olympic events that are timed or measured like Phelps’ races but I do think this is a great topic for our major sports.

There is definitely a trend going on in the major sports. The trend is that referee/judge perception continues to play more and more of a role. In the short run this means no 5th gold for Nastia but what does this mean in the long run? Are we going to continually see rules change to more fan-appeasing ways of regulating our favorite games? No way. For a couple reasons. First, the front office execs in all sports aren’t there to put at ease the mind of the fan. So, unless a catastrophe happens, rules are not going to be altered too much. But more importantly, This trend is created in the mind of the fan. Fans have an altered perception even if they say they don’t. Have you seen any statistic anywhere in any sport that suggests the quality of the officiating in that sport has declined? I doubt there’s a stat like that out there. Please tell me if there is. Fans these days just are more proud (hate to lose) than ever which means this altered perception FACT… is more obvious than ever.

But now here’s the tough question: if the rest of us find ourselves under the hex of fandom every now and then, can we really trust that the people who are responsible for officiating a sport not have an altered reality as well? Is it possible that no matter what we conciously think, say, or do, somewhere within every human being on the planet exists a fan which alters how a particular sports play is judged? In sports, can we truly seperate perception from reality?

This is the reason I have been driven away from coverage – the NBC perspective is driving me crazy. I like the games but do we have to be so blatant about “us vs. the world” I guess it is the same for most sports because I havent listened to a broadcast of NFL, NBA or any major sports broadcasting forever. Thank God for the Mute!!!!!

He brings a fans sense to the game with a perspective that isn’t clouded by our “fandom”. Plus he is a good writer and makes you think!

call because if a few bad calls can decide the game then the Blazers had no business winning. I like the Blazers to dominate the other team so no bad calls can get in the way of victory. It’s that mind set that the past Blazer teams didn’t have and this one does. They play through the bad calls because they know complaining isn’t going to change the refs mind. Yes I know momentum can change dramatically over just a couple of possessions but great teams don’t count on momentum to win games.

Just like Alicia Sacramanto (sp?) deserved the bronze the day before for the vault. The girl from China who bumped her out literally landed on her knees. Alicia barely stepped on her landing. I have been disgusted by the judging in the gymnastics competition. For the Blazers, my mom and I were watching a replay game on Comcast (when they were showing all the old games) and she was explaining to me that there was a specific referee who hated the Blazers, especially Buck Williams back then. I watched games all the time but I was pretty young and I don’t know his name, but he would make horrible calls all the time against the Blazers. After he retired he admitted to having personality conflicts with the Blazers and he has admitted to making bad calls. I don’t know if anything ever happend with this ref, but one person can totally change the outcome of a game with a bad call. Maybe championships could have been won back then, we certainly had the talent. As BRoyinthe4th mentioned above you don’t want a game to be called because of a few bad calls, but come on, really? How many times do games come down to the wire with the Blazers? We never blow out teams (maybe this will change this year???). One bad call sending a guy to the free throw line can jeopardize the game.

resurfaced for me the other day and this seems an appropriate place to share it.

I don’t remember the year, but it was late sixties, 70s. Howard Cosell was calling a boxing match between an American and a non-American. Towards the end he commented that he was glad he wasn’t judging ; he’d hate to have to call a winner. Well, the non-American won and Cosell went ballistic about the horrible (rigged?) judging. I had never been one of his admirers, but with that total change of direction I lost any respect I may have had for him.

Any time that judging is subjective it’s going to be controversial. And when fans are watching from one angle and from a distance we’re always going to see things differently. Throw into that the automatic biases for the home team and against the refs – well, we’ll always see the errors against us, but seldom for us.

Slight tangent : does anyone recognize the name Lewis Kazagger? (Don’t know the spelling as I only heard it, never read it.)

As I’ve said since they started butchering the coverage 20 plus years ago. So I’ll not bother talking about that. But what of perception and fandom? There was this super bowl a few years ago and it looked utterly fake. Now the Seahawks are my team and they are the team that looked like they were flat our screwed by the refs/league. It’s been a few years, I am certainly not the only one who said this, it was a big story at the time, and thousands and thousands of people were up and arms and not all of em Seahawks fans.

I"m far enough away that I want a copy of the game. Was it as skeewed as I perceived at the time? Well I’ve not found a copy yet but I"m able and aware that the possibity exists that I was wrong. That the league didn’t order one team to win over another. I am fully willing to relook, reevaluate and reform my opinion but what of the actual discussion of weather that game was fixed?

When it happend were the sports guys up in arms? Not if they got a paycheck. Most paid sports talkers either poo pood the idea of a fix outright or more often than not ignored it or let the story die. Why? So as not to peeve the money train. Plain and simple. The same exact thing happend with the recent NBA Ref Fix story. The NBA sports reporters on the tit sure didn’t write the scathing stories on corruption and greed in the NBA. Who did? Unpaid Bloggers and Fans. I would trust the most die hard fan over anyone who has self interest beyond team love.

Dave another interesting take on life, and I agree with you on Phelp’s looking to be behind at the wall.
I disagree with you that we “should always include a dose of humility with our opinions”.

Trail Blazers – World Champions in 2008-2009 through 2018-2019

…develop a pool of death row inmates who volunteer to undergo a ‘cranial partialotomy’ (surgical removal of the prejudice and bias center of the brain) in exchange for total commutation and freedom after time served. They would agree to extensive training in the particular competitive discipline they would be judging or officiating, then serve in that capacity for (X) years. Having had their partiality removed, they would be safe upon their return to society and could always semi-retire as marriage councilors or financial advisors. Some could even save the state money by having their prison stripes reconfigured into authentic referee shirts.

 . . . of “home team media” for Team USA.
Their broadcast market is too international for that.

I don’t mind so much when the home team’s broadcast team (radio or TV)
gets in that sort of mode; they’re OUR DANG PEOPLE!
The NBC people for the Olympics are more in the role
of the TNT or ESPN team for a nationally-televised NBA game.
From them, I expect more impartial calling.

Pretty much anyone who has ever played tennis has been the victim of a bad line call by his or her opponent or by a line judge. Former tennis pro and analyst Vic Braden conducted a study that showed that when a player’s foot hits the ground, as when running, the impact sends a shock wave vertically through the body that jars the eyeballs for a fraction of a second. If this distortion effect on the eyes occurs at the moment when the ball is hitting the ground, the player’s judgment of where the ball landed can be off by as much as eight inches.

Viewing angle plays a big part, too. Line judges sit at one end of the baselines and sidelines because it provides the best angle to see both the ball and the line. I served as a baseline judge during a match once and felt confident I could call shots not only for the court I was in but for the three courts past that one. Players are frequently at a perpendicular angle to lines when the ball lands, which is the worst angle from which to make a line call. Combine poor viewing angle with impact distortion on vision, and you have John McEnroe getting thrown out of a seniors tournament.

Technology has helped make officials’ calls more accurate in some sports, especially tennis, where the amazing Cyclops call review system can show exactly where any ball lands, and in swimming, where the touch pad and overhead cameras can eliminate doubt even in a finish as close as Phelps’ .01 victory. I think someday technology will make accurate judging possible even for sports like boxing and gymnastics.

Until then, the best thing fans and players can do is lay off the officials. Yelling at an official is not just unsportsmanlike, it adds emotional stress to them, which is also proven to degrade human performance.

I had to laugh while reading this as my wife has become a Gymnastics expert over the last couple weeks. In her expert opinion the judges hate Americans. I have no idea what I’m looking at but I keep my mouth shut since she usually does when I’m yelling at the NBA ref’s on TV and going on about how the NBA doesn’t want Portland to win. The next time one of my losing teams isn’t getting jobbed will be the first time!

… seem fair to me. Did they really defend Paul Hamm? I’ve heard them admit he shouldn’t have won the gold. The question of whether he should have to give up the gold after it had been awarded differs from the question of whether he deserved it in the first place.

For what its worth, one of the commentators (Elfi something) is Canadian.

They haven’t complained for the vast majority of China’s golds and where they did complain (uneven bars and the vault where the Chinese gymnast landed on her knees), they clearly broke down where they felt additional deductions were necessary. Sure they are a little biased, but I think they do a good job pointing things out to my untrained eye.

I will agree that Al’s “does she really think she won the gold?” comment was over the top and unnecessary.

I’ve always thought it was interesting that when a player swipes the ball out of someone’s hands and it goes out of bounds, the last person to touch the ball is almost always the guy who had the ball in the first place, but the ball is always ruled as off of the guy who swiped at the ball. I am not saying that this should be switched, but I noticed this when I was playing basketball in high school, that no matter who actually touched the ball last (Unless it literally bounces off of the guy who had the ball) it is always called that way.

The NBA is like the emperor with no clothes on. Remember that story? All the grownups are afraid to even see that the emperor is naked—let alone to say so out loud. It takes a child to shout, “The emperor has no clothes!” My wife, who could care less about hoops but who played a bit in grade school, plays that child’s role around here. She walks past the screen when my friends and I are watching a game and says, “Hey, that was travelling!” Hello!!

OK, I admit this is a pet peeve. But how can the NBA have any credibility when anyone with a pair of eyes can see that the fundamental rules of the game are being violated? I guess a lot of fans are so young that they don’t recall what a drive to the hoop is SUPPOSED to look like under the rules. But for the rest of us, it’s like looking at that fat, naked emperor and trying to tell ourselves he’s decked out in royal splendor.

Every time Brandon gets blocked it’s a foul! Every time Joel or Greg block a shot, it’s all ball!! I see things clearly, it’s those refs that are biased! :)

Why is it foolish to try to curb our biases as fans? I know that for myself, I want to root for and watch the Portland Trailblazers, not some fantasy team in my head where Brandon has never missed a shot without the other team cheating and Joel has never committed a foul. I like to think that I love this team enough to try to see them for who they really are, which isn’t perfect, but is usually pretty awesome.

That was a crazy situation. The judges got wrong difficulty and with the right one he would have won, but the judges also missed a big deduction (too many handstands?), so if he was judged properly he would have lost.

    The problem boils down to definition. By definition fans aren’t suppose to be dettached or non-judgemental. As you say, fans are fanatical. When it comes to Olympic judges, or Refs, or anything based on judgement that enforces outcome, ideally you are by definition hoping for unbiased detachment.

  I thought your commentary was spot on. It even goes beyond the world of sports. I think the world might be a better place if we could sometimes strive to look beyond our own geo-political and economic viewpoint and understand that other countries opinions and viewpoints might be closer to the truth than our own from time to time. A dose of humility with our opinions and viewpoints should always be welcomed. Unfortunately often times in the world outside of sports you don’t have the luxury of an instant replay.

Jksnake99 and Mortimer, the age limit was that you had to be 15 within the year of the Olympics. Morceanu was 14 and turning 15 in 1996, and thus was legal to compete in Athens. The age limit was raised to 16 in 1997. The age limit had been 14 until 1981, when it was raised to 15

Bela Korolyi is a strong opponent to the age limit rules. He is so up in arms about the Chinese gymnasts because he feels that if there is a rule in place it needs to be followed, as countries with lax commitment to these rules will have an advantage over countries that respect the IOC rules.

First of all, I am a longtime lurker at Bedge and have been thinking about whether I should join in the conversation or not, but this topic hits too close to home not too.

A little background, I am an American who spent the last seven years in China, and recently moved back to Portland with my wife (who is Chinese).

I believe after spending long periods of time in China that bias seems to be rather ingrained. When I watched the Athens Olympics I was in China. I constantly complained about how they showed only the sports that Chinese people were good at, such as Gymnastics, Table Tennis, Badminton, Shooting, and Archery. Now in America I have been complaining that I can’t see most of those games, presumably because America is not any good at them (excluding gymnastics of course). This is one of the reasons we see a lot of empty seats at the Olympics even though all tickets were sold out. The Chinese want to watch sports with Chinese athletes, While we want to watch our athletes.

The commentators are the same, Chinese TV commentators seem to favor China and consistently rank their homegrown performances higher than the judges, while we seem to do the same thing here in America with “our” athletes. My wife has been watching these games and seems to focus on instances when she thinks China “should have won”, while we do the same thing when we “should have won”.

Sports are about winning. And when we choose someone or some team to root for we naturally want them to win, because in a way they “belong” to us. They become “my” team. Who wants to lose?

Sometimes judges or referees are clearly wrong, and in those cases most people can/will agree that something wrong has happened, but in most cases fans of both teams can find something to complain about in the same match/game. Of course the losing team will cry more loudly because they lost, while the other team may have complained during the match/game but is now celebrating their victory. Do we as Americans really know or understand gymnastics? Can you tell, without the commentators telling you, when they should be deducted points? I sure can’t.
Do we, as common basketball fans watching a game on tv or from the stands, really know what is happening better than the referees that are ON the court? As an intellectual person I know the answer is no, but as a fan watching the game the answer is YES! That’s just natural!

Bottom line, we are all human, driven by survival instinct. We see things the way we want to, especially if it’s close….

in which all athletes are wired to the extreme (including brain waves to detect flopping) and boxing, for example, will be scored by the strength of the blow and the part of the body that receives the blow. Some equipment will also be wired – gymnastics rings to detect the slightest wobble, footballs & yard lines (which will become millmeters) to know exactly where the ball was downed, bases & baseball cleats to make sure the base was really touched, basketball shoes & balls which will be calibrated to detect traveling … etc.

And fans will be told when to cheer and what to cheer and … wait a minute, that’s already here.

I enjoy watching some games, but anyone who doesn’t know that NBA ball is simply a b.s. package for a marketing machine has been living in a cave. There is (and always will be) bias, because companies in larger markets can sell more merchandise when their town’s team wins.

The NBA is more interesting to me than “professional” wrestling, because the athletes perform incredible things, but the outcomes of games have been fixed for years. If you want to know who the next champion will be, check out the world atlas and the stock market to find out which town has more fools panting to buy sports paraphernalia.

I’ve seen this happen when I went to high school. All the kids that think their street ball selfish crap will work get a rude awakening when they have to play on a team.