Study Finds College Basketball Referees are Biased
November 24, 2009 | Todd G.
For all you College B-Ball fans out there that swear the ref is purposefully missing calls on the court, you may now have some proof. The next time you complain about it and someone says you’re just a sore loser, you can point them to this article at ABC news, which reports on a new study done that shows bias among the referees in college basketball. The study in the Journal of Sports Sciences looked at 365 college games during the 2004-05 season and discovered that the foul count remained even despite the aggressiveness of the team. In other words, how aggressive you were didn’t matter when it came down to the number of fouls.
The article cites a few of the major findings, including that the probability of a foul being called on a visiting team was 7 percent higher than the home team. In addition, fouls were often correlated to whether the home team was leading or trailing and that the disparity between fouls seemed to influence who received the next foul call. Although some referees interviewed for the piece claimed they didn’t tinker with their foul calls, others apparently said they did try to even things out. The article suggests that the best way to combat it is to just play as aggressive as possible, since in the end the foul calls will all come out the same.
