Enough with All These Flags

Penalty-crazy football referees symbolize trends that are ruining our country.

The NFL (Numerous Flag League) now has female referees, who can’t be any worse than their male counterparts when it comes to determining the outcome of games with faux and dubious calls.

From high school to the NFL, the sport of football is plagued by referees who apparently get a giant thrill out of throwing flags.

I’ve grown tired of screaming at the TV screen, “Just let them play!” 

Two recent local high school games - both Hankeyfests - motivated me to opine on this scourge. 

However, I’m not writing today’s vent as a fed-up fan; I’m writing this piece because I’ve come to believe these flag-throwing officials symbolize and embody trends that are ruining the country.

I believe something disturbing in the human psychology of “officials” compels them to exert their power and control outcomes of events.

Furthermore, the masses - we the fans - have been conditioned to meekly accept the control these officials exert over society. By now, it’s probably forbidden to suggest that power and warped virtue-signaling have gone to the heads of these officials.  

Before I get into the macro lessons, let me cite two micro examples that illustrate today's theme.

Last week, a local team, Pike Liberal Arts School, opened the football season with a game against Zion Chapel. According to our local sports editor, the game had 32 penalties.

Last night, my alma mater, Charles Henderson High School, opened the season with an upset loss to Mary Montgomery High School.

According to a game story, “Both teams were plagued by penalties — the Vikings had 16 for 119 yards and Henderson had 15 for 128.” (31 penalties for 247 yards in a game with 12- minute quarters).

“It seemed like every play was called back in the first half,” Trojans coach Quinn Hambrite said. “We got the gas taken out of us. It’s hard to come back from that kind of stuff …”

No kidding, Coach. I used to be a big football fan, but one reason it’s becoming harder to remain a fan is my knowledge that it’s the referees - not the players on the field - who actually control the outcome of just about every game.

My thought is that something disconcerting happens to many referees when they put on their Zebra uniforms, the official attire of officials that gives them so much power.

I wouldn’t last three games as a referee … because my goal would be to throw as few flags as possible.

If a potential infraction was borderline or if it was far away from the action and had nothing to do with the success of the play, I’d let it go.

This officiating philosophy would jibe with my political philosophy, which is the world has far too many nonsensical rules with too many “officials” too eager to interject themselves into our lives.

I’ve also picked up on the fact almost all color TV analysts are muted or restrained when it comes to calling a terrible game-changing, bogus call what it really was.

Especially in the NFL  (Numerous Flag League), the analysts seem to have been given orders from league officials to not harp on terrible calls.

I sense a possible conspiracy here …

Maybe I’m imaging things, but it’s crossed my mind that the Powers that Be might be trying to subliminally condition the masses into yielding to authority figures. That is, certain people - the ones who get to penalize others (in games and in the real world) - can’t be criticized.  

In football, it’s actually a rule that coaches can’t criticize official calls. If they do this in post-game interviews, they get … penalized (fined) by other “officials” in the League Office.

Which brings to my larger point: it’s not just the referees who get off exerting power, it’s officials everywhere. 

If a rule is created; they’re going to get their jollies enforcing it. And you can’t criticize them either (a new rule that should sound familiar these days).

For example, back in the dark days of Covid, League commissioners routinely fined head coaches who “broke the rules” and didn’t wear their mandatory masks properly.

Several SEC programs were fined $100,000 because coaches didn’t wear their masks properly on the sidelines. At least three NFL coaches were fined $100,000 for violating mask rules.

Mind you, these grievous offenses happened at outside games in a sport where athletes not wearing masks were blocking and tackling other non-mask wearers for four quarters.

What really happened was league officials stole $100,00 from those coaches. If the coaches had protested their fines, they’d probably have been fired.

Covid was like Christmas morning for adults who now had new reasons to create more ridiculous rules and then rigorously enforce them. When you give a bureaucrat power - and more rules to enforce - he’s going to use that power.

The rules are also a wonderful opportunity for newspaper columnists to let us know how much more virtuous they and the rule-creators are than the evil coaches and athletes who are unwilling to “sacrifice for the team.”

You’d be culled from the herd if you didn’t throw enough flags

And I’ve observed that all these referees who ruin football games by throwing all those dubious flags don’t lose their jobs. Instead, they get “atta-boys” from their supervisors. 

The scouts looking for promising referee talent no doubt look for officials in the farm system who throw more flags than their peers, which is another example that translates to the real world. 

Those whose disposition is to “let them play” will not last long in their jobs. Those who zealously enforce the rules will be promoted and rewarded.

A fishing tall tale … that’s true

I recently read an essay from  a writer who opined that the “The Administrative State wield(s) power like a battering Ram.”

Author Brian Peckford cited an example that illustrates how we’ve become a country where the “officials” now control even the most mundane of pastimes:

“For example, something as simple as going fishing—license required, where one can fish, type of hook to be used, species allowed, bait allowed, number and size of fish allowed to be kept, days and hours one can fish, safety gear required, boat registration, rules for transportation of fish, taxes on vehicle/boat/ gasoline, rods, reels, hooks, food, dock fees, camp site, …..etc.. Sadly, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of ways the Administrative State have inserted itself into the control and directing of people’s lives and there is no end in sight …”

Once upon a time, people just went fishing and didn’t think anything else about this. Now, an angler risks a dozen fines from a series of agencies if he doesn’t fish the way the officials say he has to.

I don’t know why we accept all these rules and fines. I guess the fish got boiled so slowly that we, like the fish, didn’t know what was happening.

One day we woke up and someone like Anthony Fauci, who was never elected dog catcher, could tell us all what we had to do and what we couldn’t do. 

The sports czars could suddenly fine coaches for not wearing masks and order every athlete to get four PCR tests a week. 

I don’t remember any TV analysts questioning or criticizing any of these rules or the myriad Covid Czars. We all just went along with what we were told to do by the officials - just like we do when we go fishing.

When referees throw flag after flag in a football game, it’s understood that fans should just accept the terrible or dubious calls.  After all, officials are simply doing their jobs and making the game better or safer.

I don’t know; maybe I’m stretching my “big picture” analogies with this column.

Maybe when my late father was playing high school and college football, 32 penalties were also routinely called in games. Maybe fans of games in 1961 would leave those games saying, “Boy, we had a fantastic officiating crew tonight!”

We now live in a world where more rules are considered a great advancement. Most people probably think we’re fortunate to have so many referees, bureaucrats and sports commissioners who are eager to strictly enforce all our new rules.

We now live in a world where flags are thrown everywhere, and we’ve all been conditioned to accept this … which was probably the goal our rulers were trying to

achieve all along.

And you better not criticize the refs either. If you do, you’ll be penalized.