There’s a classic coachspeak phrase that gets trotted out when people blame losses on bad officiating: “You’ve got to take it out of the refs’ hands.” After an NFL season when replay-review changes intended to fix officiating mistakes seemed only to complicate matters, it may be time to take instant replay out of the refs’ […]
Through the first two weeks of the season, holding penalties in the NFL are at an all-time high. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Heading into the 2019 season, the NFL competition committee mandated that referees enforce offensive holding more strictly than they have in the past. The points of emphasis document published by the NFL […]
Nothing preoccupies players, managers and fans during the postseason like an umpire’s strike-zone judgment. While there’s plenty of outcry over balls and strikes in the regular season too, the stakes are much higher — and the complaints correspondingly louder — when an entire championship can hang on one errant call. But although this year’s playoffs […]
Nothing preoccupies players, managers and fans during the postseason like an umpire’s strike-zone judgment. While there’s plenty of outcry over balls and strikes in the regular season too, the stakes are much higher — and the complaints correspondingly louder — when an entire championship can hang on one errant call. But although this year’s playoffs […]
Kerry Fraser, a former NHL official who worked more than 1,900 regular-season games and 13 Stanley Cup Finals from 1980 through 2010, remembers calling penalty after penalty on the Philadelphia Flyers early in his career. “They were a very aggressive team,” he said during a phone interview. “Especially in Philly, they played really tough,” with […]
