College Basketball Refs Have a “Fair” Bias
We’ve always thought refs were biased during March Madness, and now we have scientific proof! A couple of professors (Kyle Anderson of Indiana University and David Pierce of Ball State) have done a study, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences that uses tapes from college basketball games to analyze refs’ calls. 
According to Anderson and Pierce, refs tend to try and keep the foul count even, regardless of which team is actually more aggressive. They are also more likely to favor the home team, although the probability of a foul being called on the home team is 6 percent higher when the home team is ahead than when they are behind. These findings were even stronger when the games were televised.
So what does this mean? Well, refs in the NCAA try to seem fair. They try to even out the foul count so that it does not appear that they are favoring any one team. Of course, if one team is significantly more aggressive, than keeping the foul counts even isn’t fair. And a home-town bias doesn’t help either.
So are the games rigged? Hardly. But next time you’re watching the game, check the fouls. It’s a safe bet they’ll be about the same.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Athletic Associations, College Basketball, in the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
