It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post here on the Animal Blog and I guess that’s a good thing. It means that I haven’t been upset with much in the world of sports lately so I haven’t had anything that I needed to get off of my chest. But something relatively small happened this week that finally sent me over that proverbial precipice. It’s sort of embarrassing to admit that something so small

Joe West is one of the most controversial officials in all of sports.

could push a grown man to his wit’s end but I, like many of the sports fans in the blogosphere, am fed up with this one issue. 

I am sick and tired of officials taking control of the actual play of the game.

Look, I am all for an umpire speeding up the pace of a three and a half hour American League snoozer. I am right behind an official making sure that cooler heads prevail before Ron Artest takes a fight into the stands. I don’t even mind a head referee protecting an NFL quarterback with a flag on contact to the head.

But I can not stand when an umpire, official or referee decides that the fans paid 40 bucks to watch him lumber around a field and make a spectacle of himself.

Now before I get myself into too deep of a hole let me explain myself. I umpire baseball games for the OSSAA during the spring so I can respect the amount of pressure an official has to get it right every time and I can also empathize with an umpire when he gets the call wrong. But I am not talking about getting it right or wrong. I am talking about blowing it.

Case in point: Joe West. The “Singing Cowboy” hijacked a ball game between the White Sox and Indians Wednesday with not one but two controversial balk calls against Mark Buehrle. In two instances this week, Joe West believed that the Chicago ace crossed the 45-degree line when he attempted to pick off a runner at first. I’ll give Joe West this much, there is no such rule as a 45-degree rule. (If you don’t believe me, read MLB rule 8.05c) But we know how the rule has always been enforced and it’s not up to Joe West to buck the system.

West called a balk on Buehrle in the second inning and the short fuse of Ozzie Guillen was ignited. West, according to Guillen, then promptly told the White Sox skipper to “Get the ___ off the field.” Now, Major League Baseball is doing its own investigation into the matter but if Joe West did in fact say what Ozzie reports, maybe the Singing Cowboy just had his swan song.

Eddie Rush, show here with Reggie Miller, is no stranger to a quick "T".

West called another balk-that-wasn’t on Buehrle later in the game then tossed him when Buehrle flipped his glove in disgust.

Think this is some isolated incident in sports this week? How about Eddie Rush sending Kendrick Perkins to the showers early when he T’d him up for the second time for apparently showing up Rush? You’ve seen the tape: Perkins doesn’t like the call and instead of disputing it, he turns and walks away from the volatile situation only to be tossed anyway.

I realize that the NBA reversed the technical foul call so Perkins won’t need to miss a game in the Eastern Conference Finals but that isn’t the point now, is it? The point is that an official made a knee-jerk decision in a situation that didn’t warrant the action.

How about referee Joey Crawford tossing Tim Duncan for laughing on the bench? An official can’t speculate about what a player…on the bench…on the other end of the court…is laughing but that hasn’t stopped Crawford from marching to the beat of his own drum his entire career.

Whether it’s Joe West and Tim McClelland (remember the botched interpretation of the pine-tar rule with George Brett?) or Eddie Rush and Joey Crawford, no matter how well-known you are as an official, it isn’t about you. I am not a fan of his, but Ozzie Guillen put it best this week when he said “People pay to watch players play, not to see umpires and managers. I don’t see any people say, ‘I’m going to see Ozzie Guillen manage or Joe West umpire.’ Joe’s been that way for a lot of years … Sometimes he thinks people pay to watch him (bleeping) umpire.”

Justin Loomis manages production and imaging for the Sports Animal.

Just the latest in a string of athletes who've made bad life choices.

What separates the athlete from, say, the guy who sells the beer at the game? It isn’t a trick question. There are some pretty stark contrasts between a world-class athlete (or David Ortiz) and Joe Six-pack that even Helen Keller could see. First, there is the money. Consider that the average Major League baseball player rakes in $3.3 million a year and your average, hardworking Oklahoman makes a shade over 33 grand and that alone is enough to create a chasm between us and them. Secondly, athletes are fame-mongers and we are more than happy to feed them to their hearts content. And thirdly, they have the bodies of the gods (again, excluding Big Papi) which separates them physically from the ever expanding waistline of America.

     But there should be at least one thing that unites humanity and separates us from the beasts. And that one, tiny, little thing is something called a conscience. You know, that voice Jiminy Cricket told us about. Christianity calls it a “still small voice” and it is normally ignored when it doesn’t agree with what our carnality craves.

     In the recent months, and I guess years for that matter, there has been more blatant disregard for common decency among professional athletes than most of us would care to admit. Whether it’s Ben Roethlisberger’s run-ins with various women, Tiger Woods barefaced infidelity or, most recently, Lawrence Taylor’s complete idiocy and degradation, it’s almost impossible to get through an entire week without some bonehead letting his manhood out think his brain. You see it. You expect it. And yet you still get that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. You know the kind I’m talking about, the one where you’ve just seen someone ruin their life and you’re helpless to do anything about it.

     So that brings me to my reason for pecking away at this keyboard: how in the world can I avoid the mistakes that even the most protected and powerful men in the world commit every single day? Sure, it’s easy to point the finger at the bozos but we’ve all heard the saying that says there are three more pointed right back at me.  I am in no way abdicating these figures of their responsibilities, I am just merely pointing out the fact that the same blood that runs through their veins runs through mine and I never want to put my soon to be wife through that kind of hell.

    If it is true that sports are a pretty good barometer for the condition of the fans who watch them, what does that say about me? Or about you? I am not preaching, just making an observation. I realize I am not married (yet) but maybe it wouldn’t kill us to go home after work and let our (soon-to-be) wives know that we love them. Maybe, heaven forbid, the TV doesn’t flip right on to ESPN the second our feet pass over the threshold. Who knows, maybe your wife might go ahead and make it worth your while to take out the trash and mow the yard. I’m not preaching, I’m just saying…..

     What separates us from professional athletes?

Justin Loomis manages imaging for the Sports Animal as well as various on-air duties.

     I am still trying to figure out what everyone in the known universe has against recently drafted quarterback Tim Tebow. I am not naïve enough to believe that the religious barrier wouldn’t prevent some fans from fully embracing the Mile High City’s  newest high profile resident but it should only discourage a relatively small minority according to most polls I’ve seen. No matter whom you trust as your primary news source, each has done their own research and has found that most Americans (anywhere between 80 and 90 percent) believe in God and that he is active to some degree in their everyday lives.

     So why on God’s green earth would dedicated sports fans, most of whom are “fed up” with the T.O.’s and Chad Ochocino’s (or Brandon Marshall’s, for that matter) of the world, not cling to a player with the stellar moral record of Tim Tebow? Fans and even a few radio personalities (one of which is heard on this station) have come right out and said exactly what they think: “I hope he fails.”

     Tim Tebow isn’t an ideologue or even a demagogue for that matter. He isn’t trying to push himself on anyone; to the contrary, the media has pushed themselves on him. Some have called him an attention whore, probably just to try and smear his character with a word you would use for those among us who practice situational ethics. Others think his on the field behavior is more along the lines of egotism than leadership. Maybe, just maybe there is something a little more base in our observation of Tim Tebow.

    Maybe it has less to do with his low delivery and inability to take snaps from underneath the center and a little more to do with old-fashioned, sophomoric, green-eyed jealousy. I mean, look at everything he has accomplished in 22 years. He is a two-time national champion, a Heisman Trophy winner and now a multi-millionaire. Not to mention he has a nice piece of arm candy to boot.

     Look, I get that OU fan has a chip on his shoulder and probably dislikes Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart for the same reasons that some of them can’t stand Tebow. And just in case some Sooner-rooters want to leave a nasty little comment saying that I “must be a Poke fan” because of my defense of the “chosen one”, I’ll defuse that bomb before it can explode: I am one of you, too. That’s right. I am Sooner born and Sooner bred. That doesn’t mean I hate Pistol Pete or Captain Cane, it just means my dad was a Sooner fan and that his crimson DNA was passed along to me.

     So, in short, don’t hate Tim Tebow because he would rather wear a WWJD bracelet than a Rolex. Just judge him for his performance on the field in the NFL. If anything, maybe Chiefs, Raiders and Chargers fans should fall in love with Tim Tebow. I mean if he is as bad as everyone hopes, maybe Oakland and Kansas City might sniff a Wild Card this season.

Justin Loomis manages production and imaging for the Sports Animal as well as various on-air duties.