Referee: most hated bad-guy outside of fairy tales?

As an avid hockey fan, I am prone to my fair share of yelling at the referee when he makes a bad call. Okay, so admittedly I am that loud woman yelling at the referee after every bad call. So in fact, I am prone to a few people’s fair share of yelling. At this point in the game however, I have come to a revelation: the referee is just a man (usually), trying to do his job. Yet the thought still nags me… if I was to make so many mistakes in my job, would I still have one? A startling idea occurs to me: the referee is a bad-guy, just like in a fairy-tale. He gets away with doing all of his bad-guy things: missing an obvious tripping call, call an outrageous penalty, letting a fight go on too long when one player is seriously hurt, etc. BUT he never gets caught. No consequences. Now I realize that this seems entirely unfair and that, my friends, I’m afraid is the point. The bad guy is supposed to get away with things, you are supposed to hate him, and yet in the end, he always gets what he deserves. I’m heading to cheer on my Ice Dogs (OHL) tonight as they enter game 2 of the second round of the play-offs. For the referees of tonight’s game I have only one thing to say, “We all know how it ends for the bad guy, and it’s not happily ever after.” Who knows? Maybe tonight they’ll do a good, fair job and keep all the players (relatively) unharmed and safe. Still, I can’t help but wonder… who is refereeing the referees?