The Moral Ambiguity of the Makeup Call

Abstract

If one sits in the stands for awhile at a local sporting contest, whether it is wrestling, soccer, baseball or particularly basketball, before long someone will exclaim toward a referee, “That was a makeup call. You owe us one.” Everyone knows what this means but if an eight-year old beside you hears this screamed for the first time and asks, “What does that mean?” An explanation given to her will be something like “that's when an official makes a call and immediately realizes it was a wrong call so at the first opportunity he can he makes a call against the team that has benefitted from the previous call; he is trying to even things out for his mistake.” The referee or umpire is attempting to be fair by “giving back” the call with a “makeup call.” A make-up call can be defined as the act of compensating for a questionable or bad officiating call by making a proportionally even call against the team that was aided by the first call. Usually these are immediate and obvious. They can also be conscious or subconscious, intentional or unintentional. The hope is that the two calls generally offset one another without either team being dramatically harmed. I will argue that the makeup call is prima facie immoral but if one were to attempt to find moral justification for it, this could best be done through a corrective theory of justice. But this presents a number of moral questions and ambiguities, most significantly, is a makeup call just and fair? Is it appropriate to understand the makeup call as an example of two wrongs making a right? A broader philosophic al question about officiating is whether each call in a contest should be viewed by as an independent single call with the goal of the official getting that one immediate call correct or should each call be understood as in a direct relationship with every other call in that game as a type of gestalt thus justifying makeup calls? This work will probe the depths of the highly suspect yet common moral puzzle, the makeup call.