The Noisy Minority; or, Idiot Fans

There are few things about my job that I hate, but near the top of the list would be idiot fans. I've got some behind me as I type this (at the NCAA tournament in Portland, Ore.). "Call the game fair!" one lady just yelled in a grating tone. Yeah, lady, they're being paid by the other team. Conspiracy! Oh, wait, the other fans are saying the same thing, though.

I'm continually amazed at the general stupidity of some fans. I'm assuming it's only the loud ones that are stupid, because smart people tend to keep quiet. The total lack of knowledge of the sport these people are watching astounds me. They don't know a moving screen from a moving van. And of course, only the most obvious of calls – and sometimes those – aren't derided as the greatest of injustices. How could you, ref? You might as well have blown up an orphanage.

The problem, besides lacking a basic knowledge of the rules, is blind loyalty. I mean, Hitler didn't have followers this deluded. (Bad analogy perhaps, but you get my point.) The funny part is that the refs usually can't hear the fans, and if they could, so what? What isn't funny is that when a player, say, takes a charge, the knucklehead fans don't applaud the player's defensive effort. No, they'll say, "About time, ref! Been doing it all game!"

I feel a kinship with the officials. Like me, their job is to be objective and impartial. And like me, they often are showered with laughable accusations of favoritism or incompetence. Sorry, we're not the idiots.