the human element

it's a well-established fact that
as an engineer
i don't have any feelings

so it vexes me when i see human error's
inescapable effect on sporting events
which is to say the temerity of officials
to make calls i disagree with

but it's somewhat more significant than that
in all seriousness

this comes to mind in the wake of the boston area's
resurgent love of basketball
and the equally significant accusations of
referee bias
as an element that shapes a game to a particular
design

and i find that last notion to be most significant
as i'll explain

first of all i should state
that i was once a huge celtics fan
bird parish mchale dj ainge and of course greg kite
but over the years i grew disillusioned with the sport as a whole
the forty-odd minutes of preamble to a thoroughly unexciting
yet decisive final few
and moreover
the inability for a game designed for no contact
to be meaningfully arbitrated
in an age where that contact is fierce
constant
and necessary

in short i think that the balance of a basketball game
rests so heavily on the shoulders of officials that it
teeters between a tightly regulated yet unwatchable slog
or a free for all
and since so many calls manifest themselves directly
on the scoreboard
basically you are in fact paying to
watch the referees

at the same time i'm remiss if i don't point out
a similar issue with soccer
another highly-evolved sport
where the participants are well-schooled in
extracting every inch of advantage
a referee's control of a match is a frequent topic of conversation
and indeed they can fuck up and fuck up big
with a rash sending-off or award of a
penalty

but it's there that the difference is most crucial
those big
awful
decisions are there for everyone to see
and there is no hiding from them
you fuck up and entire nations may hold a grudge

whereas in basketball
it's more like the get-rich-quick scheme from office space
where the ref just keeps stealing from jerry's kids
and by the time they're done
they've affected the outcome of the game for whatever reason
for their own biases
for the mob
or for the mouse
and gotten away with it clean

maybe the solution is to not write rules
you can't enforce
nfl i'm looking at you

considering the obsession with statistics and the
archival video used by teams in practicing and training
why can't leagues of all kind use their vast riches to
hire an army of tivo jockeys
[creating jobs for slovenly americans to boot]
to re-watch every game and grade every call
baseball already does it with balls and strikes

and if we're lucky maybe someday robots will do it for us
and we'll argue with them too
and then they'll rip our arms off