I could not do it. No thank you, I could not do it. Frankly, I don’t know how anyone does it and I have upmost respect of those that do. I don’t think they do it for the glory because if this is what glory is, boy I missed this one by a mile.
A referee. An umpire. An official. You could not pay me enough money to do these jobs.
I recently sat courtside at a college basketball game and some of the things they yelled at the refs would have made Redd Foxx blush. Now is a good chance for you to google that and then you will absolutely know what I am talking about.
Here is the part that gets me. These insults are on another level and the refs don’t acknowledge any of it. Now one was giggling to himself when a fan berated him that I will not repeat here that was kind of funny but that was rare. Almost all of the others were something else.
I have friends who are refs and they tell me that they never hear the crowd because they are laser focused on calling the game and there is where all their attention is. I understand that because at the end of the day, it is just a game.
When I was 15, I spent a weekend umpiring youth baseball league games at Rotary Park in Hermitage. Good Lord. I found out quickly that my name was not Joe but entirely something else. Actually, I had several names that day and even had a coach throw a baseball at me, although he says he was joking. I was laughing for most of it until they said something about my mom and my mental capability. You can figure that out. I was 15 and was learning quite a bit about the English language on that day.
But, could you do it? Could you take all that yelling? I don’t think I could. Wait, let me correct that. I know I couldn’t do it. I would probably be fired in the first few seconds if I was a basketball referee. Someone just laying it on me and I am supposed to sit there an take it? Ha, not me.
There is a nationwide shortage of refs in all sports and in Tennessee, they have had to move many a high school football game to Thursday night because they don’t have enough refs to staff every game on a Friday night. It is getting worse all the time because the pay is not that good and look what you have to put up with.
Now, this is what has me conflicted. There is a part of me that wants to do it, at least with football. It is a sport I know a great deal about and the fans are a lot farther away than in basketball. I think I could do this but then I start thinking about the other things that go with being a ref and I am back to square one.
Someone asked me what would happen if the ref shortage got so bad that it adversely started to impact games on all levels with all sports. That is a great question and one that I hope will have not an answer, but a solution.
