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Coaches and Officials: Born to Disagree?
"A coach spends his entire life thinking
he’s fighting off alligators. A referee is just another
alligator." – Jack Pardee, former pro football coach
Coaches and officials can have an adversarial
relationship because of one major factor: Coaches care who
wins and referees don’t. Because coaches are "pulling
for" their team, devising offensive and defensive strategies,
plus keeping a keen eye on their individual players, they
see the game through vision with a built-in bias. They want
things to go their way and have events roll in their favor.
As a consequence, they sometimes view officials’ decisions
as unfair. Also, at times their zeal leads them to take an
adversarial stance in regard to officials. They feel they
have to fight the officials as well as their opponents. Some
coaches (rare) even view their roles as a contriver and antagonist
in relation to officials. They may howl, whine and plead in
an effort to gain a presumed "edge" or favorable
treatment from officials. A few coaches will purposely behave
in a way that irritates officials, apparently believing that
such antics will somehow work to their advantage.
Some coaches believe that officials are
influenced by their own expectations. That is, if a team has
a reputation for superior play and if that team has a lopsided
winning record, it may receive "soft" or tolerant
treatment by officials because their own minds have been programmed
to expect a top-flight performance. Conversely, if a team’s
(or coach’s) reputation is such that officials anticipate
sloppy or dirty play, plus either a lackadaisical or belligerent
attitude, officials may respond in a way that presumes such
a reputation to be manifest. "Expect trouble and you
get trouble," one saying holds.
That attitude also perpetuates an "us
versus them" mentality. You will often hear coaches use
phrases like, "We don’t get the calls," as
if officials dole them out in biased fashion.
A main contention with some coaches is
that officials aren’t accountable. Coaches get fired
if they don’t win. They see officials as having no one
to answer to when, in their mind, a call is blown. This is
a typical lament from a frustrated coach: "If I foul
up, I could lose my job. If an official goofs, the league
says they’re sorry and the official keeps the job. Sanctions
and reprimands should result from bad calls." Those who
complain in that fashion generally don’t have an understanding
of the officiating process, because there are checks and balances
within officiating. Refs sometimes are subject to dismissal
or are dropped from leagues due to perceived shortcomings.
Another common complaint: Officials don’t
care as much because they are part-timers. Coaches sometimes
view officials as "weekend warriors" who really
don’t care. Most officials do indeed have full-time jobs
and officiating is an avocation. The same is true for most
coaches (except at the highest collegiate and professional
levels).
Some coaches "work the officials,"
as indicated. They try to gain an advantage any way they can
to win, including intimidating or begging officials in hopes
the next call goes in their favor. Some coaches consider themselves
astute manipulators, and every phrase uttered to an official,
before and during a contest, has a calculated purpose. Frankly,
their efforts are sometimes successful, because humans are
prone to be influenced by propaganda and flattery. Watch how
TV commercials and print ads act as sales devices. Many coaches
have adopted the same persuasive techniques and are effective
salespersons. Some consider "selling" to be a central
feature of their jobs, which it assuredly is, at least as
far as players are concerned.
Whether their psychological tactics work
or not, coaches perceive them to work, meaning officials must
deal with it. When coaches yell about a particular call, they
almost invariably know that the official is not going to change
that call. They may think, however, that by making a scene
about that call, the official might be sympathetic and look
at the next call a bit more in favor of that team. They think
that mentally planting those seeds in an official’s head
works to their advantage later on.
Coaches often want things to be "even"
because they think the other team is getting an advantage
from the officials. That’s a part of the "us versus
them" mentality. From an official’s perspective,
when coaches beg for refs to "call it both ways,"
what they’re really begging for is an advantage. They’re
not interested in equality; they’re interested in an
official’s performance tilted in their favor.
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