itt we relive the worst officiating calls in sports history. I'll kick it off with a few personal faves:

Boxing: Richard Steele stops the fight with seconds to go in the final round



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Boxing deserves top billing in its capacity as most rigged thing ever. This is my #1 lolboxing moment. It is March 1990, Kendrick Taylor is fighting the unbeaten Julio Cesar Chavez, owner of a 68-0 record - the longest unbeaten streak for 80 years.

Taylor dominates the early and middle rounds, and by the 12th and final round his lead on the scorecards was unassailable. Chavez knew he needed a KO in the final round to win, and so threw everything he had at his opponent. Finally, with seconds remaining in the fight, Chavez landed a crushing right hand which knocked Taylor to the floor.

Unfortunately for Chavez, Taylor was able to reach his feet on the count of 5. Fortunately for Chavez, the ref was incompetent (or possibly bent as a fiddler's elbow). With around two seconds remaining in the fight (note the TV clock was off by a few seconds, the bell signifying the end of the round can be heard at :03) and with Chavez standing 10 feet away from his opponent in the middle of the ring, the referee decided to stop the contest and award Chavez a TKO victory out of 'fear for Taylor's safety'.

Note: Poker bloke Stu Ungar attended this fight. He had gambled his net worth on the fight going the distance. You can read about it in One of a kind.

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Baseball: Jim Joyce ruins a perfect game




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Cards fans might be annoyed that this is my baseball pick..

For those that know nothing about baseball, a perfect game is achieved when a pitcher (or pitchers) do not allow any opposing players to reach base during the entire game. It is an incredibly rare event - in over 300,000 games of recorded games there have only been 23 - twenty three - perfect games thrown. That's a ratio of one in every metric ****ton of games.

Enter Armando Galarraga, an utterly mediocre pitcher whose name would not even be a footnote in baseball history, except for the fact that he threw a perfect game.. Or he would have, if not for Jim Joyce.

Galarraga had faced 26 of 27 batters and got them all out. None had reached base. One more out meant a perfect game.

The throw beats the runner, and the final batter is out!! ..but Joyce blows the call. Unbelievable. The ump gave a tearful media interview after he saw the replay and learned of his mistake.

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Soccerball: Clive Thomas ends the game as the ball crosses the line for the winning goal



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Probably not the worst soccerball call ever, but certainly the most pedantic. Brazil face Sweden in the group stages of the 1978 World Cup. It's 1-1, we're in the first few seconds of injury time. The Brazillians have won a corner. The ball is whipped in and the legendary Zico heads the winning goal into the Swedish net. Or did he?

In fact the referee blows his whistle just as the ball crosses the line. The goal does not count and the game ends in a draw.

Note:The referee Clive Thomas is Welsh.

NFL: Vice-like grip



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Ugh. I don't have the strength to describe what happened here. Hopefully MT2R will see this thread and delve into the situation for us.

pretty sure the ump's dead now though

Good idea for a thread. Someone should do a proper writeup of the Lakers/Kings rigjob. Not sure that's a "bad call" though because it's been confirmed rigged.

Charles Corver, semi-final of WC 1982, maximal shame



Harald Schumacher can ead too

Quick cliffs - You are not allowed to throw the ball into the net, he goes to kick it in but you can clearly see he ends up throwing it in. The umpire who is at the side of the goal has to see it but still gives the goal which means Meath (the team playing in green) win the final.

After the final whistle - jimmies are clearly rustled

Joe West and Angel Hernandez deserve to be in here

Phantom tag 99 ALCS

Wonder if that game caused the rule

In terms of football (soccer).

Hand of god
Lamps goal for England vs Germany

And THE game vs Barca in the semi of the champions league.
To quote Didier it was a disgrace, a ****ing disgrace.

wow @ clive thomas

Obvious entries:




Something more recent:


Boxing alone could make this a 1,000 post thread.

the worst bit of officiating in the history of college football along with colorado's 5th down

oregon not only touches the ball before it goes 10 yards, but an oklahoma player clearly picks it up anyway. bonus points for getting it indisputably wrong while using video review

wow

Deckinger.

Tim Donaghy admitted that the NBA is rigged and that he personally rigged games. LOL @ his name not being mentioned yet.

I think a lot of people cheered when Eric Gregg died of obesity.

Whoever made that strike zone is an idiot who doesn't understand how angles work, though. It's not AS bad as this video makes it look but it was still historically awful by Gregg.

McGriff should get into the HOF for having the will power to not bash Gregg in the head with his bat at the :50 mark.

south korea at the 2002 world cup

What's ridiculous about is that the reviewing ref saw that the Oklahoma guy had recovered the ball, but since the review as strictly to determine if it had been touched early (which it had and they got wrong) they didn't bother to fix it. Apparently as the rules were written then (that was like one of the first years for replay in college football) you could only change what caused the review. They quickly changed it to be that all aspects of the play were subject to change not just the thing they wanted to look at.

The extra umpire is worthless.

The orange cross is where the catcher catches it, not where it crosses the plate...

Pitch #1/2 are awful, but 3/5 show how much embellishment there really is in this video

This is about par for the course with Scottish refs when certain teams are involved.