Most people have experienced being involved in a sports game with a bad call or have seen a bad call ruin a game for their favorite team. If I asked everyone to leave a comment about the most infamous call in sports, the comments would go on forever. Whether a bad call happens in a little league game or in a high stakes game, it can be devastating. 

Some referees are part-time volunteers, young adults and dads who want to help out. It’s understandable that mistakes may happen at lower levels, regardless of how tiresome bad calls may be.

Professional sports on the other hand should be a place where there is little to no tolerance for missing an obvious call. Professional sports are a business, so it is hard to believe that they are not stricter on their referee crews. Bad calls can make fans infuriated with a league and can create bad publicity. 

A recent football game involving the Detroit Lions and the Dallas Cowboys ended with a lot of controversy surrounding the game-deciding play. The Detroit Lions decided to go for a two-point conversion following their touchdown– with less than a minute left on the clock. The Lions successfully completed the play with a pass that should have won the game. The play ended up being called back due to a penalty. The player didn’t report as an eligible receiver to the referee, leading to a one-point loss for the Lions. That same day, following the chaos on social media, a video surfaced of the player reporting to the referee right before the play. The video clearly showed the mistake and that the Lions deserved to win the game. No matter how frustrating and obvious the wrong decision was, the game had already been lost for the Lions.

I have seen many bad calls happen before and they all end up the same. Fans argue with each other on X, formerly known as Twitter, and others say that the leagues need to do something about it. The topic slowly dies down and never gets brought up again until the next terrible call happens.

I have thought to myself- why is accountability so important? I realized that very few referee crews ever undergo any consequences for what they do and they know that nothing happens if they make a bad call. Certain teams seem to get favors or referees look out for specific players, while others tend to get called out for every little thing they do. Not being held accountable over time for these things is causing the recurring issue. It also is putting millions of dollars on the line for the teams involved. Referee decisions are no light task.

There seems to be the same issue in the MLB. Umpire Ángel Hernández finished the regular season with the worst rating in the league. According to Umpire Auditor, the infamous Hernández has had 161 bad calls in 10 games. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a bad year for Hernández, because he has been rated low continuously over the years. If you Google ‘Hernández highlights,’ there are edited videos of him missing calls, which has created a running joke for MLB fans. After seeing all of the stats and low ratings, I still think to myself- why isn’t the league doing something about this?

Fortunately, following the Lions and Cowboys game, there was a statement released by the NFL stating the game’s referee crew had lost their right to referee postseason games this year. This is something that will hopefully continue to happen to referee crews who make the wrong game-deciding decisions. If more professional sports leagues continue to hold their crews accountable, we will see less bad calls and referees will be more precise in their decisions.