Sweat is dripping down your head. The score is 4 to 4 and the clock is winding down in the final period. The expiring time raises the intensity as thousands of rival fans cheer on the other team. Disadvantage 1.  You and your teammates are not on your home turf either, so you are in enemy territory. Disadvantage 2.  After 4 playoff games side by side, your body is tired, beaten and abused, so you are not at 100%. Disadvantage 3.

The odds are heavily against you, and this is the typical scenario experienced by every visiting player in each playoff game, especially when the game is against a significant rival, where the intensity is beyond all normalcy. The game is fast paced, back and forth, with hard made plays and even the all too occasional bloodshed. For the players, time freezes and slows down around you, and with the expiring game time, the dreaded sound that you never want to hear—the referee’s whistle!

Annoyingly, the referee’s whistle is blown against you and your teammates. Disadvantage 4. The visiting team always has the disadvantage as the referee’s whistle is more likely to be blown against them, which will cause significant hardship. In a way, the referee controls the game and ensures that the rules are adhered to and to dispute matters arising from game play (i.e, Fouls, Penalties).

For the National Hockey League’s Boston Bruins, this is exactly how they felt after Game 5 of the second-round playoff series between the Bruins and New York Islanders. The Bruins lost the game 5-4 with 3 of the opponent’s goals coming on power plays, which means that Bruins were down a man due to a penalty called by the referee. The team felt so cheated by the referee’s calls that head coach Bruce Cassidy called out the referee’s in the post-game press conference.

According to CBC Sports, during the post-game press conference, Coach Cassidy stated “I think they sell a narrative over there that it’s more like the New York Saints, not the New York Islanders. The calls, the exact calls that are getting called on us do not get called on them — and I don’t know why. Maybe we need to sell them more — flop — but that’s not us. It’s not like I’m sitting there going, ‘Every call against us sucks.’ It’s not true. It’s just the end of the day, the similar plays — they need to be penalized on those plays. They (NY Islanders) play a hard, hard brand of hockey. Love the way they play. But they commit as many infractions as we do — trust me. It’s just a matter of calling ’em.”

For these comments, Coach Cassidy was fined $25,000 for criticizing the referees. As staunch defenders of freedom, the right to speak freely, and the right to present any image of yourself as you desire, Miletti Law stands firmly behind people like Coach Cassidy, who stand by their players after a tough loss, call out the bullshit and make it clear that it could have been a very different game if some of the penalties were not called by the referees. Additionally, like we have said before, Miletti Law is all for the players.

But there is a different angle here.  Sometimes, it really isn’t just the performance of the players, but rather, WHAT ABOUT THE REFEREES?

Why aren’t referees held accountable for poor performance or improperly penalizing players? They have a referee association and union, but you never really hear about referee’s getting fined or penalized for game-altering horrendous calls in their respective sports. It happens in all sports! Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, Football, ALL OF THEM! And sometimes when referees get out of hand with bad calls, action needs to be taken to preserve the competition of the game. Going to a sporting event is about the competition between the competitors, NOT THE REFEREE. Some referees have egos and may let that get out of hand. Referees sometimes get very aggressive with the improper and fast calling—sometimes this gets so bad, that even if a player says something mid-game after a call that the player didn’t like or didn’t think was proper, strictly out of emotion, that just becomes another ground for punishment. It happens as we are humans with emotions. Sometimes ego and emotion can get the best of us. All we are saying here is that referees need to be held accountable for their bad actions or bad calls and just as the players of the game get fined for their antics, refs need to be held accountable for their antics as well.

In one particular instance, a high school referee was sued by a student athlete after he was injured during a match.  In this case, Aetna Casualty & Sur. Co. v. Ariz. Interscholastic Ass’n, 1992 Ariz, a high school student in the Glendale Union High School District (“District”) suffered a serious injury during a school-sanctioned wrestling match. He filed suit against the referee, the District, and the Arizona Interscholastic Association (“AIA”), which provided the referee.  While the case was settled between the student, the District, and the AIA, the District’s insurer, Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. (“Aetna”) filed an action against the AIA seeking indemnification for the amount of their funded portion of the settlement with the student. The trial court found (a) that the District had a non delegable duty imposed by statute, but the AIA did not; (b) the referee was an independent contractor and the AIA did not have the necessary degree to control him, and (c) the referee was hired by the school. Therefore, they determined that Aetna could not recover their settlement payment from AIA since the AIA could not be held liable for any negligence on the referee’s part, and therefore, affirmed the trials court decision.

In the end, the referee ended up avoiding a fine but it’s the principle of holding the referee accountable for not taking action against a bad call that led to this student athlete’s injury.

We here at Miletti Law are here for the players and nothing is worse or more gut wrenching than a one-sided referee, so we feel for the players on that. Sports organizations as a whole need to protect their players more in the sense of holding referees accountable for bad calls. Sports Organizations should know that fans are there for the exciting parts of the game, home runs, dunks, goals, and intense final minutes of the game that get you off your seat and biting your nails until the last buzzer. Fans don’t want their team to lose on a lazy call by the referee. Sports need to hold referees and those who govern the rules of the game accountable for bad calls and actions just as they do the players.

Always Stay Unusually Motivated and keep crafting your knack!