What Is Even The Point?

[samhain]

(02-13-2023, 01:56 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: Sure, a penalty is a penalty.  Then why not call all of them throughout the course of the game?  I've got a text conversation from during the game, an old teammate of mine and I chatting about "Wow, refs letting them play tonight", to which he replied, "nice to see games decided by players and not controversial calls".  Then after the sideline catch that was overturned, he says "I stand corrected, there's the first controversial call of the night".

It's to the point where it's almost uncanny how predictable these mysterious calls are, when similar or more serious violations have been ignored routinely for most of the game. 

It just lends too much subjectivity to officiating.

You either call things or you don't.  After three quarters, a team probably feels like they have a beat on what's going to fly or what isn't through trial and error.  It becomes simple classical conditioning.  Then, out of nowhere, something illegal that has't been enforced all game gets enforced at the most crucial point.  The call literally caused Philly's once likely shot at a game winning drive to evaporate.  The real shit sandwich is that the ball was so overthrown that the reciever had zero shot at catching that ball, holding or not.

As things stand, the expectations for refs are so low that the public will accept that these guys are just bad and screw up at strangely impactful moments.  They can be all over the place, consistent, or lenient for 3 1/2 quarters and strict in the last minutes.