Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Refs

For an intramural flag football team to be banned from the playoffs, they need ten "discipline" points, which come from extreme unsportsmanlike conduct. My squad had six points last night in our first game. You may have seen awful officiating on the tube, but as bad as some of those calls are, those refs are officially trained and also have the benefit of instant replay. If my team had such a benefit, the score of lasts night game would've been 20-7 instead of the dismal 6-13 it turned out to be.

My squad, Tom Selleck's Mustache, played pretty bad considering the athletes we have, but I'm not surprised considering our chemistry blows. About half the time, especially on defense, no one seems to know what's going on. On offense, it seems like half the plays we run are deep balls that are rarely caught. I dropped one myself, so that one's on me, but I wasn't a receiver in high school, nor was I a pass-catching running back, even though we had a play (287 Rice) that had me open every single time. I was a hitter, a Jamal Lewis or a TJ Duckett, a guy who relied on the truck stick to get yards.

That's why IM football pisses me off. These fag nonathletic kids can excel in flag football (and think they're the shit) when in a tackle game they'd be toast. A kid yesterday tried to tackle me, and he's lucky I stopped and didn't plow his fucking ass down. I caught a throwback pass and ran to my left, and all of a sudden time slowed down. If you've ever been a ballcarrier, you probably have this natural "focus" (or the "clash" in NFL Blitz: The League) as well. I noticed their entire team shifting to the left, overpursuing like mad. I cut back right to run all the way across the field, and I would've been able to if one fool wasn't gassing and lagging behind in the perfect position to get me. I had to cut back to the left and saw five people flood in on me, so I instinctively tucked the ball with both arms. This guy must've instinctively thought to tackle me, so he broke down in a pretty decent tackling position, making me think he might've played football before. Except when he hit me, instead of me going backwards, his skinny ass bounced off of me and wound up on the dirt. I think the team we played was either a frat or one of those organizations where the skinny white boys think they're hard as shit because they're in it. That woke him up. I stared him down when he got up, and his teammates told him to chill, realizing the fire in my eyes at the time. Honestly, if the guy would've gotten up and talked shit, chances are I would've swung. He nicked me though, either getting me with his elbow or knee right into my thigh right above the knee. I've got a bruise there that kicks in everytime I move my left leg, and it's a REAL big pain in the ass.

Still, despite our awful play, we should've won the game. Atanna Essama, our beast of a player who looks like he could play NFL ball, caught a jump ball in the corner of the endzone. He had two feet down (you only need one in IM), with the ref standing right there, except the defender yanked the ball out of his hands after he fell down. The zebra piece of shit ruled it incomplete, yelling that Atanna "never had it". None of the other refs overruled the call.

The opposing team got the ball back, but Beitner "intercepted" it. It was one of those plays that happens in the NFL all the time, where the player falls down with it, only to have it bounce off the ground, and pretend they have it. In the NFL it's always called down, but IM football is a different story. The refs conferred, and post-game Atanna told me and Noah what he heard from the conversation:

Geek asian ref: Did you see what happened?
Hick ref: No, he (referring to the third, hideous ref) didn't see it either.
Geek asian ref: Uhm... so what do we do?
Hick ref: I'm not sure...

The geek asian ref, apparently the head, walked into the field and ruled it an interception, even though it clearly wasn't. Later on, Huslander had a clean interception and returned it 40 yards, but the ref called it pass interference because Huslander and the receiver collided in midair AFTER he picked it off. Another bullshit call.

I don't know why, because I don't like pulling stupid ass trick shit in IM football, but our offense called a reverse pass or somesuch nonsense. Noah passed the ball back to Dave Merritt, and Dave, who was supposed to run with it, passed it out for some reason. The refs called an illegal procedure for a double pass. We didn't score that drive, so fast forward to the next opponents' drive. Their quarterback rolls out and throws it to a receiver. He crosses the line of scrimmage and I chase him down but he throws the ball back to their quarterback. The quarterback then proceeds to cross the line of scrimmage himself, bombs it downfield anyways, and finds two guys wide open in the endzone. The refs initially don't make a call because they don't know what the hell is going on, even though both guys clearly made passes past the line of scrimmage. The back judge, who had no view of the LOS, calls it a touchdown, and the other refs, too intimidated to change the call, go with it.

The score is 6-13 at this point, and we drive down the field with a little under a minute left. We get a good 30 yard gain, and have enough time to run one more play, but the ref, instead of running up and hustling like he's supposed to to set the pucks (to set the line of scrimmage), literally stands there for five seconds. Keep in mind we have 15 seconds left. Then, he looks around trying to find the pucks, then bends down lethargically to pick them up. By the time he gets up, the time runs down. After screaming at him for the entire duration telling him to get his ass up, I lose it, and punt the ball onto the next field. The geek asian ref throws a flag and calls a penalty for my number, but the game is already over so I don't give a shit.

Our entire team had turned into a harem of bitches, with the only person keeping their cool being Jaffe. We were giving the refs earfuls after the game, with Huslander going so far as to shout right next to one, "Is there some sort of petition where we can get you guys fired?". All throughout the game we were screaming at the refs, two notable instances where guys swore at the refs looking them right in the eyes. Because it was such a hairy situation the refs had to confer after, and awarded us six discipline points, two for my punt, and two more each for the guys swearing at the refs (we did a LOT more, so I'm surprised that's all we got). I personally apologized to the geek asian ref about kicking the ball, and he said, "It's not a problem, but it's kinda too late now." I considered telling him it wouldn't have happened if he wasn't such a dipshit, but I kept my mouth shut. The geek asian ref went on to apologize to us as well for the questionable calls, but at no point did he admit that he or the other refs were wrong. Atanna noted after the game that most crews usually run with only two refs, and despite the fact we had three in our game, it was still a crockload of shit.

In our second preseason game we were killed by refs, and in this game the same thing happened. It's like they've got something out for us. We can only fix our team to a certain extent, and the refs are the factor we can't control. We're frustrated, angry, and down, because my squad is used to winning, whether it being in high school or IM last year. If the refs are like this the next game I think I'll write a letter to the rec sports league, because the game isn't even fun when such a blatant force is working against you.

I always hated refs before, but now I damn near hope they all die and rot in hell for all eternity.