Basketball: Foul! Study says hoop referees try to even the score

They don't all need glasses.

But if you always suspected basketball referees are biased — well, you're right, according to a couple of professors who have studied the matter.

Referees favor the home team, the academics say. They're big on “make-up” calls. They make more calls against teams in the lead, and the discrepancy grows if the game is on national television.

The professors studied 365 college games during the 2004-2005 season and found that referees had a terrific knack for keeping the foul count even, regardless of which team was more aggressive.

Exhibit A: The 2005 Final Four meeting between Illinois and Louisville. The Fighting Illini, known for being more aggressive defensively, got whistled for the first seven fouls. By the end of the game, the foul count was Louisville 13, Illinois 12. The Illini won 72-57.

Results such as this were the norm across all the games the professors studied from that season — from the Big East to the Atlantic Coast Conference to the Big Ten Conference and all 63 NCAA Division I tournament games.

The take-home message for coaches: The more aggressive your teams the better because, in the end, the foul count is going to be about even no matter what.

It helps explain, the professors say, why college basketball has gotten increasingly physical during the past 25 years.

“Part of the reason for the study came from something my coach used to tell me,” said study co-author Kyle Anderson, a visiting professor at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, who played at NCAA Division III Knox College.

“He said a team can come in and push and shove and grab and hold, and by the end of the game, or end of the half, they've got only one or two more fouls because officials kind of get tired of calling it.”

Among the key findings, which were published The Journal of Sports Sciences earlier this year:

• The probability of a foul being called on the visiting team was 7 percent higher than on the home team.

• When the home team is leading, the probability of the next foul being called on them was about 6.3 percentage points higher than when the home team was trailing.

The professors also cited an earlier study that concluded there were more calls against teams ahead in games on national television versus those ahead in locally televised games.

Calling fouls against the leading team tends to keep games closer, the studies said.

• The bigger the difference in fouls between the teams playing, the more likely it was that the next call would come against the team with fewer fouls.

When the home team had five or more fouls than the visiting team, there was a 69 percent chance the visiting team would be whistled for the next foul.

As part of their 365-game sample, the professors looked at 93 games played on neutral courts, and the numbers remained largely the same when it came to leveling the foul count.

“There's something to it,” said Irv Brown, a former official who worked six NCAA Final Fours and was supervisor of basketball officials for the Western Athletic and Big Sky Conferences.

“If you're looking at the board and one team has a lot more fouls, you probably look a little harder to do something, subconsciously.”

Try as they might, there's no way a referee can completely block out thousands of fans yelling at him. “As an official, you get the reputation that you're tough on the road, and that's what you want,” Brown said. “But it takes a lot of years.''

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