100 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 13 Jun freebie \ on: Stacker Sports- Robot Umpires Stacker_Sports
I've come around on the idea of keeping human refs, even after they're technologically obsolete.
Part of our identity as Raiders fans is that we play every game 1 vs 2. We have to beat the other team and the officials (and often ourselves). I also like that part of maturing as a player is learning a bunch of sneaky little tricks that officials aren't going to catch.
The main reason, though, is that football and basketball would grind to a halt if every infraction were called to the letter. How often do you hear "they could call holding every play"? How many casual travels and carries go uncalled or minor push-offs?
Human error is part of it and bitching about getting screwed by the refs is a major part of sports fandom.
How do you square this with how much betting has become embedded with the leagues now? Do you think the sportsbooks pressure the leagues to ensure accuracy in game results?
I know the sportsbooks themselves don't particularly care but if their customers demand it, they will demand it.
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That's a really tricky topic. More than the fact of corruption, the appearance and possibility of corruption can really undermine both sports viewing and sports wagering.
People really don't want to bet on rigged matches, so the sportsbooks do have a vested interest in making sure things appear above board. It wouldn't surprise me if they're the ones tipping off the leagues about players gambling.
Do robotic refs help with this, though? Or, do they introduce another layer of opacity where people will speculate about meddling?
I doubt the leagues would make their code open source and there will still be bad calls. However, now we won't have useful intuition about what caused the bad calls like we do with human error, because it will be some weird software quirk.
Whatever happens, the appearance of impropriety needs to get fixed. We can't have outlandishly bad calls in consequential moments, anymore, because no ones going to have the benefit of the doubt going forward.
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We go from worrying about officials being biased or bribed to software being hacked.
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