Sure, complaints in every sport would spike sharply, but they'd soon peter out. Why? Because no one wants to be the guy who gets pegged as the league's crybaby. If one player or one coach always cries about the refs, he'll lose all credibility. No one will ever take that dude seriously, on or off the field. Everyone will realize that it's truly in their best interest only to come out swinging when it's a call that really changes a game. How many times have you heard a coach say something to the effect of, "Well, we didn't get that call, but we shouldn't have put ourselves in a position where we had to depend on one call to win the game"? He's probably right, and he is taking the high road, but such remarks smack of dishonesty. Sometimes players and teams really do get games taken away from them. Let them say so.

In an age of instant-instant-X-mo-super-duper-slow-mo replays and infinite camera angles, players and coaches and owners can count on video evidence to back up their claims. Sooner rather than later, the loudmouth excuse machines will be separated from the handful of guys who got jobbed on a call and just want to vent about it. Good officials will be rightfully acknowledged for their hard work. And bad officials, guys who are constantly on the wrong end of challenged calls, will have to get better or get a new job. Officiating, as a whole, should improve, meaning that in the long run you have fewer total complaints.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram, in a story about a new NBA code of conduct "designed to muzzle owners," reported on Monday that Mavs owner Mark Cuban, a kajillionaire, has been fined close to $1.6 million since be bought his team in January 2000. Cuban, who last year was fined $250,000 for "several acts of misconduct" during the NBA finals, clearly still says and does whatever he wants. It's hard not to conclude that Cuban asks himself, "Hmm, is what I'm about to say worth $250,000?" If he feels it is, many fans may assume so, as well. If anything, the fines vindicate his behavior.

It's a little similar to a scenario studied in Freakanomics, the excellent book by renowned economist Steven D. Levitt and New York Times Magazine writer Stephen Dubner, where a day-care center slaps a $3 per-child daily fine on parents who picked up their children after 4 p.m. The parents already paid close to $380 per month for the day-care service, so, really, what's another $3? In theory, if a parent was late picking up their child every week day for a month, they'd only be charged another $60. From the text: "... there was another problem with the day-care center fine. It substituted an economic incentive (the $3 penalty) for a moral incentive (the guilt that parents were supposed to feel when they came late). For just a few dollars each day, parents could buy off their guilt. Furthermore, the small size of the fine sent a signal to the parents that late pickups weren't such a big problem. If the day-care center suffers only $3 worth of pain for each late pickup, why bother to cut short the tennis game?" The day-care center, after instituting the fine, actually saw late pickups increase.

The moral here is that people really only change their behavior when incentives warrant that it's worth the effort. Criticism isn't a bad thing, so why prohibit it? Promote it. Study it. Incentivize it.

Professional sports leagues should be ashamed of themselves for not doing so.

Justin Doom can be reached at sidoomsday@yahoo.com. Some of his past columns can be found here.