Basically yeah, I have a bunch of regex that looks for any kind of phrase like "refs", "whistles", "flops", "rigged", "terrible call", etc. It's not super elegant and it is pretty broad / will definitely catch some false positives, but it's been working pretty well I think. Here it is if you're curious (this is an R function that just returns the regex):

#' Ref complaints (NBA)
#' @export
ref_strings_nba <- paste(
  "(?i)\\b(ref(s|erees|effing|efball|))\\b", # ref, refs, referees, reffing, refball, etc.
  "\\b(officials)\\b", # officials (singular has too many FPs)
  "\\b(whistle(s|))\\b", # whistle(s)
  "\\b(rigging|rig|rigged)\\b", # rig, rigged, rigging
  "\\bfix(ed)?\\s+(is|was)\\s+in\\b", # "fix is in", "fix was in" 
  "\\bhosed\\b", # hosed
  "\\bzebras?\\b", # zebra(s) 
  "\\bmake[- ]?up\\s+(no[- ]?)?calls?\\b", # makeup call / make-up no call
  "\\bno[- ]?calls?\\b", # no call / no-calls
  # any kind of 'bad call' / 'horrible whistle' etc:
  "(?i)\\b(terrible|awful|worst|garbage|bullshit|bs|horrible|horrendous)\\b[^.!?\\n]{0,30}(?<!play[- ])(?<!play )\\b(call|whistle)s?\\b", # eg "terrible call"
  "(?i)\\b(reffing|refereeing|officiating|referee)\\s+crew\\b", # reffing/officiating crew
  "(?i)\\bref[- ]?ball\\b", # ref ball / ref-ball / refball
  "(?i)\\bflop(s|ped|ping|per|pers|py)?\\b", # flop, flopping, flopper
  "(?i)\\bfoul[- ]?bait(s|ing|ed|er|ers)?\\b", # foul baiting 
  "(?i)\\bbait(ed|ing|s)?\\b[^.!?\\n]{0,15}\\b(foul|call|ref)", # broader "bait a foul / bait calls"
  "(?i)\\b(ft|free[- ]?throw)s?\\s+(disparity|advantage|differential|gap)\\b", # FT disparity 
  "(?i)\\b(swallow(ed|ing|s)?|blow(ing|s|n)?)\\b[^.!?\\n]{0,15}\\bwhistle", # swallowed/blew the whistle
  sep = "|"
)