Being a Ref is the Most Thankless Job

Sometimes I am glad I don’t understand everything that is going on in Basketball because it keeps me from complaining about calls Ref’s make. I can’t imagine a harder job than trying to run back and forth on a court and watch ten different players doing ten different things. I have a hard enough time just following the ball, let alone all the people that are trying to get the ball.

At a game, which the opponent will remain anonymous, I had the displeasure of sitting behind a large group of family members from the other team. It was a good thing it was not a packed house so we could have a few empty rows between us. First because the Mothers’ hairdos were so big I could not see the court over them if I was right behind them. But the real bad part was the amount of smack they were screaming at the refs.

If bad sportsmanship had a PhD course these people were Doctors of how not to act in front of children. Not only did they complain about the refs at every call that did not go their way, but also one mother seemed to purposely pinch her baby when our team was making a free throw so the child would scream. This was completely unnecessary since the father’s were making rude sounds anyway.

At the end of the game the Ref’s, who I think were actually fearful for their lives, came up to the group and looked at the mother who resembled Sheena E from the early eighties in her ripped up acid wash jeans and earrings the size of saucers and said, “You are bad.” The language repeated back to the ref’s is unprintable, but those guys got out of that gym as quickly as possible. Here is the crazy thing, that mother’s team won.

Perhaps rather than team highlights on TV we need to have videos of parent lowlights. The poor children who have these people as their role models. I still can’t figure out which player they belonged to because no child on any team ever acted as poorly as these parents.

I think I am going to keep my ignorance of the game right where it is because I am never tempted to scream at a ref because I just won’t ever know as much as even the blindest ref. Poor people can’t get paid enough to put up with that kind of abuse.