On Saturday, the Clemson Tigers fell at home to the Virginia Tech Hokies 20-16.
But the final result of the game isn’t the story of it—at least not for me.
Speaking after the loss, Clemson’s decorated head coach Dabo Swinney stepped up to the podium and said something many of us at home watching the game were thinking.
“Obviously, the refs were a big part of the game,” Swinney said. “They were very, very visible tonight, for sure. They had a lot of TV time.”
Of course, the coach went on to say that looking to the zebras is never an excuse.
But that won’t stop me from taking a closer look.
To begin with, however, I don’t necessarily want to examine that particular game. Clemson lost and so be it. Swinney wasn’t complaining about any specific call—he was making it clear that there was just an awful lot of them.
And I agree.
Every week now, whether you’re watching the game on Saturdays or Sundays, the refs continue to play outsized, starring roles. Yet, no one set out to cast them in this way.
Football fans all over the globe are nodding as they read this. They’ve seen recent blown calls against Florida State in a double-overtime game against the now No. 1 team in the country. They saw the questionable whistle in the Notre Dame-BYU game that helped decide it.
And don’t get me started about the NFL—someone is going to have to create a fantasy football referee league for as much screentime as these guys are getting on Sundays.
Let me put it plainly: No one wants refs to be the star of their weekend.
What’s the old maxim? The best referees are the ones you never notice during a game. Exactly. But these days, it’s far too often the opposite.
In sports and in business we’re taught to control the things we can control—just like Dabo said in his post-game presser on Saturday. We’re taught not to focus attention on the things we can’t control.
But then there’s a line, right?
At a certain stage, the un-controllables start to gain outsized attention because of your inability to manage them. They start to snowball in a way that makes everything else impossible to even attempt to attend to.
I think that’s the way you have to see what’s happening in officiating these days.
Not only is it a topic of conversation amongst almost everyone I know (heck, I’ve been writing about it here all season), it’s also starting to really affect the product in both the NFL and college week after week.
People want an even playing field. People want rules. People want consistency. When those basic needs aren’t met, the game itself can unravel.
At the end of the day, players (and people, in general) want to focus on what they can control. They want to get better, they want to push their limits and the boundaries of what’s possible. But they can’t do that when the whistle is blowing non-stop.
Leagues need to understand this. They need to sit their refs down and provide consistency, just like coaches have long sat their players down to teach them to focus on what they can control in their own games.
It’s a delicate balance, and an important one.
But right now, one side isn’t holding up the end of their bargain. And I’m throwing a flag!
