As someone who used to ref soccer and play various sports, I really hate the āref blew the big gameā narrative that seems to come up in at least one sport every year. A call from the ref is just one event in a game that likely lasted 60 - 90 minutes depending on the sport. If you lose the game from that one event, you were never the clearly better team to begin with. Considering that the champion is ideally the best team of the year, Iām not going to shed tears. At most, I might point out that the NFLās awful playoff structure invites stuff like this to happen. In any other sport, you move onto the next game, because losing one game still gives you a few more chances to prove youāre better.
Ultimately, though, it is just cathartic to blame the ref. You can still claim that your team was better and that they were merely the victim of unfortunate circumstance. Itās why Iām glad that, as a ref, I could end games prematurely. It gave me some course of action whenever an obnoxious parent decided that I was the sole reason their childās team was losing, because of course their perfect child would otherwise carry the team to victory single-handed.
