Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
I think the NFL is so far and away the biggest sport in North America that it has the most complaining about the refs, but in generally I would say it's probably better than the other leagues.
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No. It's way worse.
The issue isn't usually the clearly lopsided calls (which is a much bigger problem for the NBA, whose refs blatantly advance the interests of its star players, major markets and storylines). It's the impact of bad calls being disproportionately large in the NFL due to the way the game works, and the smaller set of games for those calls having an outsized effect.
In the NBA, a bad foul call or a missed turnover is usually not worth more than a few points in a game where there will be about 200 such points, and its impact is over in less than 30 seconds. In the NHL, a bad call is only worth a PP, which usually does not result in a goal (average NHL power play is in the low 20% conversion rate) and typically takes 2 minutes.
In the NFL, a missed turnover, or a call that would result in a drive ending, or causing a drive to end, has repercussions for minutes on end in a game where clock management is crucial to determining who wins. A missed turnover with 3 minutes left is game-deciding - a bad penalty with 3 minutes left in an NHL game rarely is.
And if a bad call does heavily influence outcomes in the NBA or NHL, it's just 1 of 82 regular season games, or at worst, 1 game in a 7 game playoff series. It's just not as consequential.
The outcomes in the NFL are, on the whole, the result of referee calls. The calls they make are as impactful as the plays made by the players on the field. It is
literally Refball, as a professional sport.
Oh, and yeah I did turn it off at halftime. Doing almost anything else would be less frustrating.