What's the Single Worst Call You've Ever Seen?

Referee Danny Davis when the Hart Foundation won the belts from the British Bulldogs.

 

All agreed we immediately advance 1972 Olympics hoops to the Hall of Fame?

Manny Pacquiao.

1968: Drysdale's shutout inning streak extended when umpire rules Dick Dietz didin't try to get out of a HBP with the bases loaded.

For what's left from my Raiders fanboi days, the Immaculate Reception.

 

Come on guys, seriously?

 

Bret screwed Bret.

Though to be fair, pro rasslin' has had more than its share of officiating controversies.

 

Haha!

 

The stupid process rule. If you catch a ball, take two steps and then fumble, it is not a catch. Bull. Shit.

 

The more I read about it, the less convinced I am that the 1972 Olympics hoops final ended as the result of a wrong call. The management of the end of the game was botched horribly, of course, but it seems as if there's a legitimate case to be made that, had it gone the way the U.S. wanted it, that would have been, in essence, a wrong call.

 

BUT HE MADE A FOOTBALL MOVE!

 

The U pass interference call.

Tim Tschida in the 1999 ALCS.

About five pass interference calls, on both sides of the ball, from Sunday night's game.

 

What made that one extraordinarily bad is they had a chance to overrule it with replay and didn't do it. A lot of these calls, if you fucked it up the first time, there was no way to rectify it. The officials had the chance to fix this one and they doubled down on their stupidity.

And the most egregious series of calls was the strike zone for the Atlanta Braves' pitchers in the 1995 World Series. Pitches were a foot off the plate and called strikes for Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz.

 

That's an unpopular opinion in these parts.

But you're correct.

The clock malfunctioned (it read 0:50 after supposedly being reset after the Soviets' timeout), horns blew twice when they shouldn't have (once during Collins' free throw, and once as the Soviets were trying to inbound on there second "try" --- with the clock still reading 0:50).

But there wasn't an official's "call" that turned a victory into a loss. The most egregious thing an official did was award the Soviets a timeout they shouldn't have had. That's bad --- but it didn't turn a win into a loss. All it did was give the Soviets a 2 percent chance of winning instead of a 1 percent chance.

Horseshit defense and not letting suspended 7-foot-4 Tom Burleson defend on the final play allowed that 2 percent chance to succeed and turned a win into a loss.

 

Most of the biggies have already been mentioned. I personally think it's Denkinger, 72 Olympic basketball and Roy Jones in some order.

Tuck rule seemed like a screw job, but it was apparently the correct rules interpretation (as irrational as it still seems).

This ref's call in the 1983 Alabama at Penn State game has always chapped Tide fans' asses:

Postscript: The back judge who made the bad call was later revealed to be the uncle of former Penn State running back Mike Guman, who was famously stopped at the 1 on third and fourth down by Alabama in the 1979 Sugar Bowl.