As an avid sports watcher, the question pops into my head just about every single game. Which sports are blessed by the referees, and which ones could do with a total revamp? This is the question I’ll be tackling today.
I’ll be taking my analysis from the top four American sports leagues, as well as the overseas Premier League. This, keep in mind, are not all the sports I watch, nor do I even watch all of the leagues. I’m simply using these leagues for the reliable data and referee quality. So to once again quickly comb over the leagues, we have the MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, and Premier League.
The Best of the Best
Let’s start with the best. In my personal opinion, I think the best referees are going to come from either the NHL or the MLB (umpires). I want to give proper credit to both sports, as I think they’re also the most difficult to referee. Umpires in the MLB need to have the eyesight of a gazelle spotting a lion in the Serengeti, watching a ball fly towards them at one hundred miles per hour. They can’t let the catchers trick them into framing the pitch as a strike either. Match this with the base umpires that have to make lightning fast calls if runners are safe or out, based on a limited viewpoint. They get the correct call almost all the time.
As for the NHL, I can’t say I watch it as adamantly as other sports in this. From what I’ve seen, however, NHL referees have extreme talent. They need to be able to skate better than anyone, even the players, as well as make appropriate calls. They also need to have the physical strength to break up fights when they occur. I have nothing but the utmost respect for them in that regard.
Let’s get into more of the statistical approach to find out the correct answer. In 2008, the home plate umpire’s accuracy on properly called balls and strikes was at an abysmal 81%. Of course, we didn’t realize that it was abysmal until we received 2022’s data, moving up to 92% accuracy. We’ll use the latest figure of 92% accuracy to measure their success. The number seems very generous.
The NHL referees get roughly 95% of calls right, per this source. A 3% difference might not sound or feel like a huge gap, but when an entire game can be determined off of one missed call, it’s a large deal. Let’s also remember that the NHL was the first Major 4 league to have referees (and umpires) go off of the field of play for video reviews.
Just to throw some more statistics out there, which I will come back to later. The NFL claims that the referees are correct 98.9% of the time, and the NBA claims their referees are correct with 95% accuracy. I would argue not to fall into the believability of the percentages.
So based on percentage alone, I would argue that the NHL has the better referees. However, sports are not solely determined by referees accuracy in the sport, but how the refereeing affects the flow of the game and other aspects that cannot be measured with a mere number. It’s also unfair to group every referee of a sport into a single group, but for simplicity, it will have to do. For everything I have discussed, I would continue to say that the referees in the NHL are the best.
The Worst of the Worst
That leaves three more leagues to cover, and four still in contention for the worst officials. The NBA, NFL, and EPL stand in this competition. I haven’t given a clear number on the accuracy for EPL referees until now, which before VAR’s introduction sat at 82%, but now sits around 96%.
Based solely on my experience watching the sports, I would say that I watch the NBA most frequently (due to the number of games in a season), the EPL next, and the NFL lastly. With that experience, I would argue that the NBA is the worst of the worst, then the EPL, and then the NFL. However, that would be a bad ranking, because it doesn’t account for anything other than experience.
Disregarding experience, the ranking would actually be the same. So, after all, it’s not a bad ranking but instead a good one; in my biased opinion. Keep in mind my favorite sports teams being the Boston Celtics and Liverpool FC. Liverpool FC has been robbed of multiple calls and had many others against them. They revealed in a report that there have been 20 VAR mistakes this season, 20% (4) have been against Liverpool.
The Celtics do receive favorable calls most of the time, but it’s impossible to watch players like Giannis and LeBron under the current officiating. The NBA is a league full of super-star calls, not super-teams. The NFL is hard to judge in terms of officiating because there are so many players to watch. However, rewatching games, there’s a lot of missed calls.
So statistically, I would argue that the NBA refs overall need an entire revamp. The EPL officials are bad, but it seems to be more of an individual problem. The overall consistency in the NBA is worse than a VAR EPL. It’s time the NBA looks into the overall performances of referees and fining the referees for making game-changing calls on a whim.
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