You know how MLS has a "Goal of the Week" and "Save of the Week", where someone picks 5 nominees in each category and then fans get to vote on the winner? Well, how about a "Blown Call of the Week"?

It would have to be run by fans, since there's no way MLS would do something that calls attention to the horror of its refereeing. But it could be set up the same way, with nominees and fan voting and a "winner" announced every week. In keeping with Goal/Save of the Week, the winner would be the person involved, namely the referee (center ref or sideline ref) who blew the call. Both bad calls and bad non-calls would be eligible.

There are a few issues that would have to be solved:

1) How would people nominate calls? Would they need to submit video? Maybe post it on YouTube? Are there copyright issues? I know quoting short excerpts from copyrighted works is okay sometimes, but I don't know what the limitations for this are.

2) Who would sift through the nominees -- given the standard of refereeing in MLS, there could easily be dozens every week -- and choose the 5 to vote on? Maybe a system could be set up to give every voter 5 selections randomly chosen from all the nominees; with enough voters and the right statistical methods, you could arrive at a winner.

3) How would voting happen? Someone (who?) would have to set up a web site, both for exhibiting the nominees and also for fan voting. And for announcing each week's winner.

4) We could also have a yearly winner, the "Blown Call of the Year"....

Obviously this would be a way to get MLS to pay attention to the badness of its refereeing, but it would also be a lot of fun in the meantime!

P.S. I have a call to nominate this week:

1) Player commits foul.

2) Referee blows whistle to stop play.

3) One team keeps playing, shoots, and scores.

4) Referee decides to allow the goal, despite having stopped play before the shot.