I find the drive to perfect sports officiating weird. There are three absolute truths that apply to every sport: (1) the rules are completely arbitrary, (2) the outcome is ultimately meaningless, and (3) they exist to be nothing more than an entertaining distraction. I see no need to demand perfection as if Ron Kulpa is launching a manned mission to Mars.
I realize I am solidly in the minority here.
On this site, the above point of view could almost be considered nihilist. But, at your insistence, I suppose I'll give the notion of "caring about sports" a defense.
If I want an entertaining, meaningless distraction that I can do whatever I want with, I'll go read some fiction. Like the rest of life, the events we experience have only the meaning we choose to ascribe to them. There is no ultimate, objective decider of "meaning". But in my experience, many people choose to follow sports for a combination of:
1. Ability to relate to large groups of other humans in an increasingly mobile and globalized world where we share fewer and fewer elements of common background with the people we live, work and goof off with.
2. Sublimation of competitive instincts
3. Identification with a region, a legacy bequeathed to you by parents or siblings, or a general attitude or set of principles established by a team or its fanbase (usually implicitly)
4. Taking something complex, like body movements through space and time, and teasing out an understanding of why things happen a certain way or how they could be influenced to be different.
5. People who are really really good at doing something kinesthetic, look really cool when they're doing it. And people like to look at cool things.
With #4, it's no coincidence that there are a ton of lawyers, scientists, software engineers, medical professionals and financiers here on SoSH - on a day to day basis, we all deal with systems so bewilderingly complex, that applying the same thinking to something that isn't literally life or death or of cosmic importance is a welcome relief. #s 1 and 3 don't require any sort of consistency to the application of rules, just that there be a series of events that we can be a part of, or a brand we can identify with, to share that collective experience.
But there is a competitive aspect to sports that it's easy to undervalue. The rules that govern each sport are somewhat arbitrary, but not
entirely arbitrary. They start with some basic idea, e.g. "it's really fun to hit a flying ball with a bat really really hard and see where it goes", or "I bet I can take this ball and get it past you guys and put it somewhere". The contest of who is better at that thing, whether it's chess or MMA, starts with that goal, and then develops backwards from there. We can't have the visceral pleasure of beating the living hell out of a flying baseball if we don't agree that, hey, come on, you have to throw it where I can reasonably hit it.
Enforcing the rules of sports preserves our ability to experience the basic thrills of competition, and agree that X is better than Y (at least on this day!). It gives people a structure to go out, move around, get some exercise and look cool while doing it. It gives us a place to test ourselves competitively where the stakes are not life-altering (as with, say, hand-to-hand combat, or hunting...) And it enables that identification with a team that lets us attach so much emotion to the outcomes, even if we have no influence over them.
The whole piling-up of emotional and social and intellectual value that people get out of sports, then, becomes an utter farce if the rules aren't enforced. If the rules that provide some sort of shared, agreed-upon structure are casually thrown out or ignored, or their abuse is seen as minor, it deprives us of any of those benefits. Sports have a winner and a loser, a tightly defined structure, and an element of physical performance. That's what separates it from most other leisure pursuits, e.g. watercolor painting or cake decorating. If the contestants' actions don't determine success or failure - if some random, preventable human mistake can erase an athlete's lifelong hard work and preparation to focus on executing in that moment - that's when sports become truly arbitrary and meaningless. Not before then.
Sports aren't for everyone. And it's certainly possible to ascribe
too much importance to them. But the structure they provide gives rise to a different kind of enjoyment in life, one with a bunch of side perks. You stop calling balls and strikes properly - or at least, you tolerate a lack of enforcement when the tools are available to do a better job - and sports might as well be gardening. Why throw all of that away so casually? I think that'd be a mistake.