Poor or biased officiating is a leading cause of mini-riots and fights at basketball games.
My daughter played varsity basketball in HS. Some games were so frustrating that I wanted to ring the official’s necks. I never cared if her team won or lost, but the bad officiating would just really sting. It really crushes morale as well.
I think the problem is often that the refs are just not very good. This isn’t the pro’s after all.
But this video, especially example 5, is really hard to take. Someone could have been seriously injured.
yes. The failure to enforce the rules means that you get advantage from breaking them. Since the rules really are “whatever is called”, a foul isn’t a foul if the referees decide they aren’t going to call it.
If you are in the game to win, you’ll commit the fouls you can get away with.
Just like football — linemen hold just about every play, and how flagrantly they do it is based mostly on whether they get called or not, getting progressively worse until the foul is called, and then they know the limit.
And in baseball, if the pitcher finds that the umpire is calling a way-inside strike, they will certainly aim for that spot more often.