I was ref at high school BBall game once and standing about at half court while other ref was on other sideline closer to the basket. One team was dribbling the ball up the court uncontested like they had done the whole game and I turned my head to check out the other players closer to the basket when I heard the crowd go into an uproar, yelling at me and such. For some silly reason the kid dribbling the ball apparently just crossed the half court line and pitched it to the other guard a few feet from him who had not quite crossed half court. People wonder how I could have missed something right in front of me. The odder thing was the other ref saw it but didn't blow his whistle either. Guess he thought he saw it wrong if I, standing right by them, didn't call it either. You can't call something you don't see even if it is obvious to everyone else. I suspect the official that should have called roughing the kicker glanced away and didn't see the whole contact, maybe just the ending part where he thought the kicker was just falling over Sherman. The game is fast and just a blink of an eye can cause your brain to have to fill in what you didn't fully see. The brain is a wonderful thing in that it does that constantly. It is programmed to fill in each and every scenario and make it complete even when our eyes miss a bit of it. Not only that, our brains remember the scene to be real, even though it made up a bit of it to make sense out of the whole thing. That is why witnesses in court can all have a different story from watching the same event. They will each swear they saw it correctly and in their minds, they truly believe they have.
