[D. Bergin]

I think baseball is easily the cleanest of the various major sports as far as officiating goes.

It's just a simpler game to call, and instant replay and added pressure on the umps to have more consistent strike zones in the last 15-20 years or so, have made the officiating more accurate then it used to be.

There's still crappy umps behind the plate from time to time, but I think people forget that it used to be way worse and more arbitrary from crew to crew back in the "good old days".

NFL Football is such a bang-bang sport and lots of the penalty calls are so subjective, it's enough to want to rip your hair out several times a game, even on a well called game, while certain star QB's do seem to get preferential treatment on certain types of calls.

NBA Basketball seems the most suss to me. I don't think games are fixed for teams per se, but I've seen enough playoff series through the years that you would have a hard time convincing me the NBA wasn't engaged in trying to extend series to as many games as possible in order to maximize ticket and TV revenue. The swings in momentum from the standpoint of the refs calls from game to game would just seem wild at times. That said, I don't think it happens as much now, as it did 5 or more years ago.

I haven't watched NHL hockey religiously in a very long time, for me to give a great opinion on how it's called nowadays. Just a simple interference penalty at an inopportune time could swing the momentum of a game, but I don't remember being too pissed off at unfair officiating when I was following hockey more intensely (just at how much the Whalers usually sucked). Maybe somebody else can chime in on this.