So, I used to umpire Softball in college. The one rule I made paramount to all others holds true for Baseball, Basketball, Track and Field, Wrestling, you name it....you never make a call that decides a game one way or another. I say this to acknowledge that whenever your call directly decides who wins and who loses, the outcome is never a good one. Take the incident involving Serena Williams in the last set of the U.S. Open Semifinals. A foot-fault call by an official earned said umpire an ear full from Ms. Williams who found her Compton roots quickly by delivering a severe tongue lashing and also earned the maximum penalty for Serena which includes:

• $10,000 fine by the U.S. Open for unsportsmanlike conduct
• An additional $500 fine for racket abuse was also imposed by tournament referee Brian Earley
• and the possibility of Serena losing her entire $350,000 prize purse for this tournament, plus recieve a ban for future Slams starting with the 2010 Australian Open. All within the committee's authority.

I'm not saying that officials shouldn't make calls, I'm not even so jaded as to propose that Serena's comments should be overlooked, but whenever you make a call resulting in point distribution...kind of giving the match away if you do it on match point. I would've went ballistic too. You basically just gave away the competition to the opponent. If she foot faulted then she foot faulted. I'm not going to cry foul, but Serena's right, she's never been called for foot fault so gingerly before and her game wasn't off by any measure, so what gives?

The Williams sisters have always received the short end of the stick in what some perceive as leveling the playing field against their unabashed dominance. Nevertheless,...wow.

Considering this outburst may have caused the No. 2 seat in the world to be banned from the sport that made her famous for at least a year doesn't bode well. Sure she still has her clothing line and her lucrative acting career....

...

but her endorsements have got to suffer considering she's not on the court to promote the "swoosh".



Emotional outbursts in the heat of competition is expected from athletes, you see it in the NBA, NFL, NASCAR, every sport features at least one of it's stars lashing out at a questionable call that drastically changes the outcome of the competition at hand. This official just had the unfortunate duty of calling it in the final minutes. No different than a phantom foul call in favor of the home team on NBC, no different than an out of bounds call less than a yard from the goal line as the clock ticked down. The only difference? There's a team dynamic. There's always a level-headed guard or wide receiver to come snatch you up and pull you away from career suicide.

For Team Serena, in absence of Venus, there's only I in team, and she payed the cost for stepping over the line with no net to catch her.