When you’re a referee, everything you say or do is wrong. It’s just a fact of organized sports. When you make a call there is always someone to tell you how much of an idiot you are.

The same goes in the world of Ithaca College intramural sports. It’s a league where the grand prize is a T-shirt. But don’t call a foul if the other team disagrees or else you’ll face the consequences.

“Where’s the foul!?”

“Out of bounds!”

“This is ridiculous!”

There are standard complaints that happen hundreds of times per game, and there are others that are certainly not fit for print. But why is there such animosity in sports, which by definition are strictly for fun? Maybe if we understand the average intramural referee, we can understand why it’s unacceptable to get in their faces.

The thing is, just like the players they officiate, they are not professionals. Sure they get paid a paltry on-campus-job amount, but that doesn’t mean they moonlight as referees in the NBA, NFL or FIFA.

These brave students endure only a couple of training sessions and rules meetings before they are sent into the fire with nothing to protect themselves but a whistle.

Senior Jon Leibowitz, an intramural soccer referee and participant, has seen his share of blowups on the pitch. In one game he played in, it got so out of hand they brought a third official to the game. The tension was still in the air, though. When a foul was called on another player who didn’t agree, the player responded with a request for a rather vulgar favor.

“The players feel [the referees] aren’t trained well enough, so they’re more prone to blowing up,” Leibowitz said.

The arguments don’t stop with soccer, though; they are present across every sport. In intramural basketball, in-game complaints are so prevalent it seems as if the referees don’t even notice it.

Before a call is made when the ball goes out of bounds, players’ hands start pointing to which way they believe the ball should be going. Players scoffing right in the face of a referee or even pounding on bleachers when a call doesn’t go their way are part of the norm.

Sophomore Tyler Faust has only been refereeing for a year, but even in his limited time patrolling the basketball court, he has strategies to restore order when games get out of hand.

“I just tell players to relax or ignore them,” Faust said.

It didn’t take long before he had to use those strategies. In his first game this season a fistfight almost broke out.

“It’s a thankless job,” Faust said. “The players don’t take it seriously, but they expect us to take it the most serious of all.”

Cory Francer  is a senior sport studies major. Contact him at cfrance1@ithaca.edu.