Are We All Nuts?

A Personal Story by Stanley Lover

Look at the facts. We are an endangered species. More than a million of us worldwide, dying out like dinosaurs of a bygone age. Our demise is largely due to our own folly for we suffer the cruelty of human nature from the very people we help add sunshine into workaday lives. We put up with insults, abuse, threats and assaults.

Trained experts in our field, we are the targets for the masses who protest, contest, accuse us of corruption and worse.

No, we are not politicians. We are sports officials.

According to verbal taunts from the sidelines we are the lowest form of human existence, illegitimate offspring of unmarried parents, fair game for insults and humiliation. So, why do we do it? Are we all nuts?

Who are we? Doctors, engineers, teachers, lawyers, scientists and experts in our chosen occupations. Experience of life, maturity and integrity are other qualities evident whenever sports officials meet.

Intelligent and successful people, hardly compatible with the “mental defectives” targeted by moronic verbal missiles launched from sidelines.

The real heroes in sport are the thousands of solitary guardians of discipline at the grass-roots level who have little chance of reaching the top. Those who devote a large slice of their lives in a sports official’s role contribute an invaluable service to the community. So, why aren’t we loved?

Recruits in officiating face a steep learning curve. The rulebook only scratches the surface of a real game, which often is played at a high speed. It delegates responsibilities and supreme powers to the referee. He or she is a judicial system on legs. He detects the crime, makes the arrest, deliberates as the jury, announces the verdict, passes sentence as the judge and carries out execution — all in a split second. Some task!

Reflecting on my own commitment to soccer, the questions flow. Why did I choose to officiate as a referee? Why have I exposed myself for years to the ever-present atmosphere of grudging acceptance; to ridicule and humiliation; bearing the incessant verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse of players and fans; enduring the minimum of facilities, washing in buckets of icy water on a bleak winter’s day?

Ask around among your colleagues. Why do others indulge in a hobby in which they blow whistles and wave tiny colored flags? Are they nuts too? Is it for the money? How many have made a million as a sports official?

Common answers include, “I do it for the love of the game,” or “I want to give something back.”

For me it goes deeper than that. Yes, a major attraction was to be active inside the play, the next best thing to actually kicking the ball. I was part of the theatre of sport, playing a role, which was positive and satisfying.

But I realize now that, during 25 years serving as an official on the field, I was hoping for a dream to come true — a dream in which every soccer match is played to the highest ideals of fair play: in which the players, guided by moral and physical disciplines written into wise rules, combine individual skills in an athletic ballet of spectacular movement and color; in which they express emotions of excitement and joy for themselves and spectators.

I wanted to relive all of those wonderful moments of elation I felt as a boy with a ball at my feet.

In reality, every cynical foul, every attempt to cheat, every act of disrespect for the game and its disciplines spoiled that dream; felt like a knife in my flesh, drawing blood and staining my vision of the purity of sport. I know that dream was naïve but, together with fellow referees, I tried to limit the degradation of a healthy sport by thoughtless players and fans who do not share my degree of passion.

Although my dream has rarely been realized, I look back on my years as an active referee with satisfaction. I learned much about myself — about latent convictions, accepted responsibilities and developed attributes, which served me well through life.

An endangered species we might be but we’ll never be extinct. We can never be replaced by robots, which could possibly enforce the rules by computers. But without human heart judgment and streetwise justice, our sport would become an arid emotional desert.

Sports officials will continue to rock on an emotional see-saw, one day ready to pack it all in, and then feeling an irresistible surge of adrenalin before the next game. It is an obsession, which yields more satisfaction than frustration.

After that heart searching and mental agonizing I ask myself the final question, “Would you do it again?” Without hesitation I get the stupid answer, “Yes, sir!”

OK, so I’m nuts, too!

Stanley Lover, Neuilly, France, is a premier soccer referee author.