Interjecting Themselves

My son's football team - the Green Hill Hawks - have made the playoffs and are a number 1 seed. They play later this evening at home. All of their games will be at home until the championship level games - which will be held in Chattanooga. This is their second year in existence, and their first year in Division 5 - 5A. They went 9-1 and defeated every other team in their division. Particularly sweet for the team were victories over Wilson Central (my son and about 10 teammates played for them in 9th grade) and Mt. Juliet (a number of players played there before Green Hill opened up). Anyone familiar with high school football rivalries understands how sweet it is to beat your rival. 

A week ago today was the Green Hill - Mt Juliet game, held at the Mt Juliet field. For those not from the area, the two high schools are about a 10 minute drive apart, and both within Mt Juliet city limits. Of course, the hype was big. For the most part, the Green Hill Hawks players, students, parents, and coaching staff kept an air of quiet professionalism. The Golden Bears students worked themselves into a frenzy over the course of the week. 

Signs created by students, and social media posts, contained phrases such as,

"This is OUR town!"

"Rejects!"

Etc.

Of course, there has been an air of being "stuck up" about and around MJ since I've moved to town. In fact, when Green Hill was slated to open, my son was scheduled to be re-zoned to MJ. In conversations with MJ parents, he was told he and his re-zoned teammates would never take the field, regardless of how well they performed. It was if playing for Wilson Central had somehow "tainted" them. 

The atmosphere was electric - nearly 1000 Golden Bear fans, and easily twice that many Green Hill fans packed the stadium. As was to be expected, the referees were VERY HEAVILY slanted in favor of Mt Juliet. This is actually a running joke in the area, and has been for the 20 years I've lived here. 

Normally, high school refs try their best. In games where they begin displaying favoritism, a few well timed chastisements from the fans usually puts them back in place (more on this later). 

Normally.

Of course, this was not the case for the GH vs. MJ game. 

Despite the heavy interference, Green Hill, down 21-7 with 5:00 left to go in the game, scored three touchdowns and won. Despite outstanding play from MJ, and despite the clearly bought and paid for referees. 

In a similar story, my favorite professional baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, won the World Series on Tuesday night. The score of the game was 7-0 vs the Astros, and the series was won 4 games to 2. Twitter account "@UmpireAuditor" does a recap of games, grading the umpire's performance. In 16 playoff games, Umpire Auditor noted that umpire calls favored the opponent 13 times, favored the Braves twice, and once was even. In the World Series, in only one game did the calls favor the Braves, one game was even, the other four favored the Astros. 

Further, in the World Series, overall missed calls favored the Astros 42 times out of 68 - that's 61%. In the four games where calls favored the Astros, 32 of 44 calls favored Houston - 73%. This is not "happenstance." I have said for years that major league sports fix many of their games - particularly playoffs. The movement is growing as many online have access to more technology that helps the casual fan see the "errors" that consistently keep piling up. 

Some might say that both of these instances are examples of referee / umpire crews interjecting themselves into the game. I would agree - to the purpose of changing the outcome to favor the side they were paid extra to favor.