Post By: Barry Mano, President, National Association of Sports Officials
Introduction
For the June 2021 issue of Referee magazine, I chose to use my column, titled the Publisher’s Memo, to address a particularly important topic to all of us in sports officiating. That topic is the sanctity of a sports official’s impartiality, including the perception of that fact.
The ethical underpinning of that impartiality is the very foundation stone of organized and sanctioned sports. Without sports officials who hold themselves to the highest ethical standard, believability in the outcome of any athletic contest gets stressed and microscopically evaluated. That is not a recipe for sports fulfilling the goals we collectively have set forth for them.
The following column was not an easy one to publish. I say that because, in effect, I was publicly taking to task an official with a very fine resume, based on a long career. He was successful and we could look up to him. At the same time, I felt an overriding obligation to speak from the heart about the topic of our actions as they relate to the ethical standard in officiating.
I thought many of the points I wrote would be relevant for compliance professionals since you, too, must be seen as fair and making decisions based on the rules.
***********************
In March, veteran NHL referee, Tim Peel, brought his notable career to a tragic end. Tim was on track to retire after the current season. Instead, he was “retired” from the ice by the NHL. His release was a direct result of an offhanded comment he made to one of his partners, during a game between Nashville and Detroit. Standing near the Nashville bench, Tim did not realize that he was in range of an open mic and what he said went well beyond his partner.
After having made a call on Nashville early in the second period, Tim made a point, including a profanity for emphasis, that he wanted to call an “early” penalty on Nashville. He did not say why he wanted to do that, but one could surmise that he either wanted to stake out territory for the second period because of stuff that happened in the first period, or he wanted to “even” things up or he felt an earlier call was not worthy and tried to smooth things over with words. All interpretations of his comment simply lead to a bad place for us in officiating.
Within hours the firestorm erupted, as you can well imagine. The media and the fans were outraged. They collectively said that Tim’s comment showed that officials played favorites; that they make calls up; that they use “make-up” calls. Bad stuff. The league acted swiftly. The Nashville-Detroit game was to be Tim’s last on-ice experience. His career was over. The furor that ensued drove the issue well beyond just the NHL. Virtually all major news outlets picked up the story, even including the Hollywood Reporter, which covers the film industry! Why?
Sports are a crucial element within the fabric of our society, our culture. Organized sports help define who we are, what our aspirations are, and they provide us with a sense of purpose. People want to believe in sports, they want to believe in the outcomes of sporting contests. Without such believability of outcomes, sports as we know them become theater only. Those that “own” the games know that full well. That is why they are so dedicated to ensuring we officials are held to the highest ethical standard and that we hold ourselves to that standard.
A countervailing force to be reckoned with is the general belief among fans, the media and sadly, even some administrators, that we officials have “agendas.” Many believe we make up calls and that we make calls to even things up. Many believe we care who wins. These believers have an insurmountable blind spot; one that precludes them for seeing the fact of our impartiality. Thus, when an official slips-the-lip with an open-mic nearby, they seize that opportunity to scream: “See, I knew it. I told you so!”
The insurmountable blind spot will never be cleared, will not be moved out of harm’s way.
In the week following Tim’s impropriety, I was asked to do two long radio interviews with Canadian stations. In both cases, after vetting what had happened that night, I was asked what the takeaway is for us. My response was this: The tragic end to an officiating career is not something I like to witness. In this case though, that end was self-administered. In some measure there is an element of unfairness to what happened, but, at the end of the day, we officials have no wiggle room when it comes to making statements, publicly for sure and privately just as much in my opinion, that any reasonable person can interpret to mean that we have an “agenda,” that we want to get even or that we care who wins. That is a boundary line, that when stepped over, can and should lead in only one direction – the end of being an official. The end of having credibility as an official.
Yes, there can be a road back, but it will be unpaved and full of ruts. When people lose their trust in you, rebuilding that trust becomes working big stone with a small chisel. As in life, so in officiating. The folks yelling at us might not like us, might not like our calls, but they want to believe that we are only inept, not corrupt.