Are college referees biased?
By Adam Rittenberg [Chicago] Daily Herald Correspondent
Posted on March 24, 2002
The NCAA Tournament is often termed the most exciting three weeks in sports. Last-second heaves and No. 12 seeds are thought to be the common causes, but one college researcher believes a more controversial facet is involved.
Kendall Thu, an anthropology researcher at Northern Illinois University, says the presence of television has affected the way games are officiated.
Author of the study, “Keeping the Game Close: Fair Play Among Men’s College Basketball Referees,” Thu and his research team analyzed 67 televised Division I regular-season and postseason matchups from January 2000-April 2000.
They found that officials consistently called more fouls against the team with the lead, consequently keeping the score closer and the game more competitive.
“We suspect there may be some sort of link between referees wanting to keep games close in order to appease large television audiences,” Thu said.
Thu stands by his research, but one former Division I official doesn’t buy it at all.
“The referees don’t give one rip about making the game more competitive,” said Barry Mano, a 23-year officiating veteran and president of the National Association of Sports Officials. “That’s not our role.”
Mano questions the legitimacy of the research, suggesting Thu and his team should have looked at three or four seasons before publishing the study.
“He is treading on very dangerous ground,” Mano said.
Selecting random games on national networks, ESPN and local stations, Thu and his team found that when the television audience increased, officials called a greater number of fouls on the leading team.
For example, the study says officials whistled leading teams for an average of 5.3 more fouls than the trailing team when the game was on a national network such as CBS. The disparity was 2.8 more fouls for ESPN games, and only 1.5 more fouls for games on local or regional stations.
“We know viewership rises or declines with the competitiveness of the game,” Thu says. “Referees may be succumbing to some of this.”
When Thu discounted the final two minutes of each half, a period often featuring many desperation fouls by the trailing team, he found that refs called 58 percent of the fouls against leading teams when the game was nationally televised.
Thu states his results do not suggest “impropriety on the part of referees,” but he maintains the findings aren’t a fluke. He says the odds on refs randomly calling this disproportion of foul calls against leading teams is 3 in 1,000.
“It just couldn’t happen randomly,” he said.
While Mano said he had not yet read the complete study, he did not believe Thu’s findings could be statistically verifiable.
Referees are aware of which network broadcasts the game, Mano said, but TV is “absolutely a non-factor” in how they officiate.
“He doesn’t understand the officiating mind,” Mano said of Thu. “We have so many facts and perspectives to sort out. ... I know these people. I understand what it takes to make those decisions in real time. There is nobody out there that I’ve worked with that this has ever factored in for.”
One of Thu’s most surprising findings concerns games in which teams lead by 10 points or more. Although basketball credo cautions leading teams against committing fouls, the research showed that more whistles blew against the team on top.
“As a basketball fan, this seems counterintuitive,” Thu said. “The team behind is often the aggressor, trying to get back in the game by scrapping for more fouls.”
The officiating pattern also held true in games where the lead flip-flopped several times, showing that officials did not favor one team over another.
A team’s ranking did not sway the results and neither did home-court advantage, Thu said. Results of the 67 games showed visiting teams were whistled for 51.8 percent of fouls called, but Thu said this figure is not statistically significant to show an edge for the home team.
Thu said he was not able to compare televised and non-televised games. Another difficulty for the researchers was gathering official statistics on foul calls, which are kept by every individual athletic conference.
While Mano said the study further confirms that home-court officiating advantage is merely a myth, he could not understand how television could influence foul calls.
“So we don’t care that the home crowd can beat us up in the parking lot after the game, but because we’re on TV we’ll make calls one way or another?” Mano scoffed. “It’s a total fiction.”
Mano said every foul and “non-call” in Division I is videotaped and graded to prevent any kind of misconduct. But Thu counters by stating if the foul calls were distributed objectively, he would have found more balance between leading and trailing teams.
Although he has no clear explanation for the officiating pattern, Thu likened the officials’ behavior to baseball umpires shrinking the strike zone to create more offense for television viewers. While he does not believe refs are being bought off before games, Thu said the presence of television has put pressure to keep the game more dramatic.
“The links might be very subtle, or even subconscious,” he said.
Mano disagrees.
“To say it’s subconscious, give me a break,” Mano said. “These guys are practical, they have to be. They are in the eye of the storm for 40 minutes out there.”