Home Officiating Bias

I recall reading that the reason the officiating often goes in favor of the home team is because the officials (mostly subconsciously) are afraid of angering the crowd and having thousands of people boo them.  Been shown with soccer fields where the crowd is closer to the field and therefor louder to those on the field, that the officiating is more in favor of the home team.  Hard to fix unless you make them deaf.

another thing that is frustrating is the inconsistency of the charge vs block call, hardly ever will they call more than one or two charges in a row no matter what, especially when they go against the home
team

The game as a whole has gone down hill. They have adjusted the rules for supposed increase in "speed" which simply means lack on fundamentals. Everyone carries the ball and travels.



My huge issue is what I call anticipation fouls or the let it go until the player misses the dunk/lay up and then call the foul 5-10 seconds after it occurred.



To make the game more entertaining they allow a modified street ball to be played which makes officiating harder. Fouls are no longer cut and dry because due to TV we can't have star players fouling out.

In a general, conference-wide sense I think officiating hurts the B1G in the post-season.  In the ACC they certainly wouldn't allow Aaron Craft to put a saddle on opposing PGs like the B1G does.  While OSU played good D in the game, ACC refs calling OSU vs. whomever at a neutral site in the Dance will have a whistle-fest with the hand-checks, reaches, on-the-ball bumps and off-the-ball muggings.  Being acclimated to this style of play can bite B1G teams in the ass when they have to deviate from the style they've played the entire conference season.  I know numerous caveats apply to this theory but I think it definitely plays a role in the post-season.

I'm absolutely sick of the overwhelming favoritism officials give the home team, particularly in the B1G.  The players should dictate who wins and losses, not the officials.  The officiating in Sundays game was clearly in favor of ohio.  The amount of non calls and inconsistency with blocking/charging calls was maddening.  This was also evident in Michigan's win at home against ohio last year.  If that game was called evenly I don't think Michigan wins.  It makes conference play an absolute farce.

I’ve been saying this for years, I’m glad someone finally made a post about it.

Love how this thread and it's premise (of which I pretty much agree with) happens on the night the number 2 team in the country loses at home.  Irony or Alanis Morrissette Irony?!

When we beat state by one last year there was at least 8 points state got screwed out of and even though we won it effected how I felt. 

Then on sunday OSU gets handed the game at the end and I get pissed.

Just call it fair all around.

nuff said

The finest home cooking in my 35 years of following basketball:

Indiana University during the Bobby Knight years.

Boston Celtics during the Larry Bird years.

Duke throughout the Coach Eyechart reign.

In general though, home cooking is worth I'd say an average of about 8 points a game for the home team in college basketball.  The Ohio State game was a perfect example, where early attempted charges all went OSU's way as either a blocking foul against a UM player, or a charge by a UM player against a sliding OSU defender.

This is honestly the single reason why, as exciting as basketball is, it will always be #2 in my book behind football.  I just flat out detest how much of the game gets controlled by the poetic license of referees making endless marginal calls to (a) favor the home team, and (b) favor the team getting blown out to make the game respectable.

No solution to it really, unless basketball can find a way to rework the charge call, which is the single biggest culprit of this bias.

IMO the reason all of the things pointed out in this thread happen is fairly simple at most elemental level.  Referees are humans and all humans would rather be "liked" than disliked.  No one will ever convince me that refs wouldnt rather, if given the choice, be cheered rather than booed and the very definition of "50-50" calls means there's no definitively right way to call it.  So the referee has a choice to make literally in his subconscience, in the nanosecond after he sees somethng that warrants a wistle.  Do I want to be cheered or booed here?  And not surprisingly the vast majority of referees (Joey Crawford notwithstanding) would rather be cheered.

Also I think Ghost of Yost makes an excellent suggestion on having the refs wear some form of noise-deadening device.  I really wonder if they couldnt get the sensory input from the crowd if they would still make the calls the way they do.  I honestly think they would resist this however as it would prove fairly quickly that the home team bias is real and exists and none of them ever wish to admidt to this.

If you remember (and I put the NBA and NCAA in the same bucket) a few years ago when Mark Cuban started charting calls when the same teams played with the same officiating crews to see if the calls varied from home to away and the league went nuts.  Nobody wants this unpleasant reality to become validated because if it was then leagues, both college and professional, would be foreced to actually do something about it.

Intimidating environments can create a buzz and the officials react to it.