I have never been a ref before, but two of my brothers started reffing football this past fall.
One of my brother's kids has played football and my brother was at every one of his games yelling at the refs for bad calls. He was not the loudest fan yelling, but he wasn't far from it. At least he didn't cuss at the refs.
Now that he refs, he realizes that you can't see crap from on the field where you are reffing. When he was in the stands, he could see the whole play and always seemed to see every penalty that wasn't called and never saw the penalty that was called against his son's team. (Imagine that)
My dad was in the stands yelling at the refs during a junior high football game and my mom pointed out to him that two of the 3 refs were his kids. He didn't even recognize them or know they were reffing.
After the game he went to talk to them and told them how bad they were, so they had to explain to him that they are in a certain spot to ref a certain part of the game and have to pay attention to that part. They need their eyes to be on the lineman looking for holding and jump starts while another is watching for whatever else and so on.
It's amazing how your point of view on reffing can change once you have done it.
