Pet peeves: Keep them in the game

[bainsey]

Originally Posted by just another ref

There is an obvious problem here that nobody has mentioned. (have they?)
If you take the position that you will be aware of a player with four fouls and take care not to foul this player out on a "marginal call" then that will lead you to lean in the other direction and allow this player to get away with something which would have been a foul earlier in the game, or, even worse, to pass on a foul on this player that might still be a foul on another player.

I find both of these possibilities to be as unacceptable as anything else in this thread.

+1

The reason why we get so caught up with late calls is the incapacity for our brains to recall all of them. The reality is, in a one-point game, we very likely did something to affect the game's outcome. If that happens in the first three quarters, very few remember, and we get a pass. That doesn't remove the fact that it happened, though.

The same goes for fouls. A player is disqualified because he commits five fouls. All five count. If one or two are marginal, they still count, regardless of when they happened. The reason people get upset about a marginal last one is because they've likely forgotten how the others came. Still, they were called, and the effect is indeed the same. Just because we don't remember how they happened doesn't mean they didn't happen.