"I hate college basketball referees." (Brian) Odds are you will hate them even more after the Ohio game.

I assume that you are assuming that these foul shot attempt differentials are the result of biased refereeing?  

You don't see any alternative hypotheses (like differnces in style of play)??

You sir, have a lot of time on your hands.

Having dominant big men and great players that get to the rim leads to free throws and high percentage shots, both of which lead to wins. Also teams that have the lead in a lot of games get fouled and go to the line more.

ANOVA is meaningful to say these aren't random, but not to say that it's poor officiating causing this. There's definitely poor officiating, but I don't think this really shows that. For one, successful teams are going to shoot a lot of free throws at the ends of games because they're ahead. Good big men may draw more fouls as well.

Now it is very possible that I'm wrong, but shouldn't the total of the "Foul Diff" column be zero if all these fouls occured against only teams in the Big Ten?

Unfortunately this chart does not tell us much as there are other factors involved, mainly differences in playing style as mentioned above. But it will be very interesting if you use this same data and compare the W/L and foul differences of each team home and away. That way you can isolate those two variables and see if teams have a better home record, and if so if it is related to foul differential (aka partly officiating). 

The free throw thing is nice, but I can't look at that chart without thinking, man, Michigan has been bad for a decade.

OSU has Sullinger. That is reason enough that we won't be liking the refs after the game.

Uhhh...as some of the above posters have said, you have identified a definite pattern, but you have in no way identified the source of the pattern.

To keep it short, which team do you think will have more free throw attempts?

Team A, who has had multiple seven footers over the past 10 years, most/all being above average big men.  They score lots of points in the paint.

Team B, who shoots almost half of their FG attempts from behind the 3-point line and hasn't had much of a post game in recent history.

Team A is clearly going to shoot (significantly) more free throws, right?  And Team A is obviously Ohio, Team B is obviously us.

I think I need to retire from the game threads on this board.  Any single little thing goes wrong and you get seemingly dozens of people crying about the refs.  I've watched most of the games this year and in my view (hugely biased towards M) the refereeing has been even, for all intents and purposes, for the whole year.  There seem to be a lot of alarmists and/or people who don't want to own up to our team's deficiencies, and would rather appropriate the blame to outside sources (read: the refs).

Sure, you can take a small sample size and identify calls that went against us (ie shoe on the line) but you can also take a small sample size and cherry pick calls that went our way.  It is human nature to remember the close calls that went against you compared to how often you remember the close calls that went for you.

TL;DR version: This just in: THE REFS ARE NOT BIASED AGAINST US.

For posting a thread whining about the officials but then I saw you posted something useful. Thanks for not posting another stupid thread.

I officiate high school varsity. Anyone who thinks they are better, please go sign up and get some games. Your tunes will change. The NCAA guys cut insane schedules. Basketball will always be the hardest sport to officiate. No one will ever be happy.

Edit: Oh and officials couldn't give a shit about who wins or who is playing.

Honestly, I'm shocked that MSU and Illinois are in the negative despite their dominant records. Other than that, what everyone said above. Big men, winning late in games, OSU starting games in the double bonus, etc. 

Hey I just was trying to get objective.  I had no idea that there would be these differentials which I admit may be multicausal but cleaarly staistically significant.  There is not easily accessible data about home v. away.  Please notice that Iowa Minnesota which have similar W/L records to Uof M had 550 and 200 more foul shot attempts than Michigan.  The data does show that foul shots attempts are significantly associated with wins. (No surprise there.) Here is the data table for all the teams and seasons team free throws and free throws for opponents.

Sullinger gets EVREY FREAKIN CALL too.  I'm prepared for a very long afternoon but I remain optimistic.  Go Blue!

While it's great that you know how to use Minitab (I'm going to assume you had to take IOE 265 for some reason) that is not how causation works. If you scatterplot the data set you can see there is a modest trend and R2 is .12, which is terribly weak.

Your ANOVA is correct in drawing the conclusion that teams have different foul differentials.  That's really the only thing you can say.  Putting it a different way, your data over 11 years shows an average season differential of 64 fouls between Michigan and Ohio State.  If you say that the average season is around 25 games, this is a difference of 2.56 fouls per game.  These may or may not be evenly distributed in B1G play, and I would suspect standard deviation for fouls per game is so large that 2.56 one way or another probably wouldn't be statistically significant.

Frankly, given the vastly different playing styles of Ohio State and a team like Michigan, I'm surprised that the gap is even close to 2.56 fouls/game.  it would be interesting to know if we're being kept relatively even by the Amaker years.

Officiating is really hard and I agree that I did not care who won and it was so tough to listen to the players whine about my calls that I decided not to do it any more.  I still play in YMCA leagues at age 62 with kids who are younger than the tshirts I wear.  I still whine at the refs now. What can I say other than I am a deeply flawed and hopeless whiner at the refs as are a significant number of the players and coaches as mentioned above.  Still thought the stats were worth sharing.  Again make of them what you may.

always a direct result of how aggressively a team attacks the basket.  Ohio has some big dudes including the leagues biggest.  Iit should be no surprise teams spend a lot of time flailing around trying to stop them and thus fouling them frequently.

Good teams also find themselves at the line a lot at the end of games because the last resort for any team trailing but within touch of an opponent is to foul.  Ohio is a good team, thus they shoot more FT's.

Refs are human.  Some are honest and "don't give a shit who wins."  Some allow their personal biases to come into play on the court.  Some get into trouble with gamblers and loan sharks, or get an "offer they can't refuse."  

They don't call it "working the refs" for nothing.  If refs weren't occasionally affected by outside factors, coaches wouldn't bother to "work" them.  I don't think every ref is dishonest, but I think it's safe to say that every ref is human, and prone to the frailties thereof.  Some handle those frailties better than others.

What frustrates me the most is not the missed calls here and the.re or even a game like the other night agaisnt Purdue where it "seemed" there was some bias and reaction to the home crowd. It is when the referees in a game make themselves part of the game with their poor-quality calls, in a sense helping determine an outcome of a game. I've noticed this occuring more frequently over these last few years. Part of this is due to many rule changes and referees being forced to hone in on certain plays/actions. I'm not in the club of blaming referees and calling them poor at their tough job. It has however become hard to watch a football or basketball game anymore and not "feel" the presence of the referees and I feel that shouldn't be happening.

To the referees that read this board, thank you for what you do. It is a very difficult thing to do, judging sports like you/they do. Keep up the good fight and allowing us to sit on our couches and criticize the hell out of ya'll! (My personal gripes do come with much respect)

But, but, he has NUMBERS and a CHART, so he must be right, right?

Maybe we can get a Blockhams comic strip dipicting this bias/or non-bias in a funny and amusing way?

Are you sure you have the MSU and Iowa FT numbers correct?  It would seem to make more sense if they were reversed.  It's especially hard to imagine Iowa being that bad and yet still shooting way more FTs than its opponents.

Thank you for providing a clear-cut hypothesis and conclusion that B1G refs are biased towards Ohio St and Illinois and against Northwestern.  I'm positive there are no other factors in play.

Marc Cuban got himself in a world of trouble with the NBA when he paid people to track calls when the same two teams were playing home versus away with the same set of officials.  He proved there was an overwhelming bias for the home team (I suscribe to the humans don't like to be boo'd theory) on foul calls.  So for me anyways that sort of took the "style of play" arguement out.  Do teams play different styles at home versus away?  I dont think so.  The only variable was the presence of lots and lots of humans yelling loudly for one team versus the other.  And the refs (being human themselves) were influenced by it.

Maybe OSU got to play more home games?  Who knows........

Yes

Sorry I'm with Cuban on this one (which is why i think the NBA/Stern went absolutely nuts when he did it).  To me what proves the point even more is that certain officials call against the home team on a consistent basis as well.  As much as purists would like to deny the influence of a crowd people inherently like being liked.  And conversely people (and refs fall into that category) dislike being disliked.  Making the 50/50 call the "right way" at home garners cheers, not boo's. And all you need is two or three of those to go in the same direction (see Michigan/Iowa 2011 football for an example of this) and you've got the home team winning a game they would ordinarily lose.

Take a look at this betting site that looks at the same stats for establishing betting recommendations.  Interesting.

http://www.covers.com/pageloader/pageloader.aspx?page=/data/nba/referees/referees.html

I noitced the following post a couple of weeks ago.  Some insight into the home/away foul discrepencies, though I don't have the raw data the poster had:

post

This spans 10 full conference seasons (2001-02 through 2010-11) which is 84 home and away games apiece. 



Total fouls called per game (both teams combined):



1. Carver-Hawkeye (36.9)

2. Breslin Center (36.8)

3. Assembly Hall-IN (36.3)

4. Mackey Arena (35.1)

5. Welsh-Ryan Arena (34.9)

6. Williams Arena (34.7)

7. Kohl Center (34.5)

8. Bryce-Jordan Center (34.1)

9. Crisler Arena (33.8)

10. Assembly Hall-IL (33.8)

11. Schottenstein Center (32.8)



Total home/away foul discrepancy differential (homecourt advantage minus away disadvantage)



1.  Wisconsin (+6.00)

2. Purdue (+5.86)

3. Indiana (+4.93)

4. Michigan St. (+4.86)

5. Iowa (+4.82)

6. Northwestern (+4.76)

7. Ohio St. (+4.52)

8. Michigan (+4.19)

9. Minnesota (+4.11)

10. Illinois (+4.07)

11. Penn St. (+3.80)

     Yes, most of the home court advantage in the big ten comes from officiating.  Probably half a dozen to a dozen points/game when you figure in minutes missed due to foul trouble, posession, free throw disparity and how it handcuffs a defender. 

     Unfortunately, free throw disparity doesn't tell the whole story as some teams really do get fouled more and some teams really do commit more fouls.  Unfortunately the only way to get quantitative data on this would be to UFR every big ten game from an officiating standpoint and document the blown calls.  That would take forever, and it would just confirm what we already know. 

     From my eye, it shows up the most in the charge/blocking foul decision and the "last touched" out of bounds calls.  The home team bias is there, and believe it or not Michigan benefits from it too.  Beilein said it himself, you have to play considerably better than the other team to win on the road.  It can be infuriating on the road, but as long as its consistent I dont have a problem with it.

Damn...you wanted this to be a Diary worthy post, so bad.

I found this thread wildly entertaining, especially since I'm someone who hates college basketball refs as much as anything.  What's interesting, however, is that I didn't watch the Purdue game and get that frustrated.  I thought the refs were lousy, but they were equally lousy.  I was far more pissed at some other games (and the Iowa game in football - much like Blue Seoul was) than I was about the Purdue game.

But I think this entire thread can be summed up as follows:

• Being a ref for a basketball game is nearly impossible.  There is contact on every play, things are moving really fast, the players like to "draw" fouls, and you can't see everything. 
• Because refs are human, they are prone to being influenced by the crowd, momentum, and coaches.  This leads to a home/road bias by default.
• Watching Michigan will often be more frustrating because we have a lot of players that will try to take a charge rather than block a shot.  The charge/block call is a coin flip and that results in a lot of frustration.  Michigan also doesn't attack the basket Dwayne Wade style to draw fouls as much as some teams, so they don't get to the line as much.
• The announcers are specifically told not to dwell on bad calls or show a lot of replays of controversial calls (I know a TV producer who worked an MSU game at Ford Field and was instructed to show no more than 1 replay and none of controversial calls).  When there's a bad call in football you get to see it 5 times on replay and the announcers will talk about it.  In basketball there are fewer replays due to the speed of the game and because they don't want to show bad calls.
• There are a lot of "old" refs in the B10 and a few who like to be in the spotlight.  The Sports Guy has brought this up with the NBA too - why are the refs so old?  Why are there no young ones?  Ted Valentine and Eddie Hightower love being in the spotlight and have been referees in the B10 forever.  If you do a google search for Valentine (http://statsheet.com/mcb/referees/ted-valentine) and Hightower (http://statsheet.com/mcb/referees/ed-hightower) you see link after link about how angry people are with them. 

Here's an example:  I watched the MSU-MN game this week and saw a ton of inconsistent calls without replays.  Then there was this play that got shown over and over again where Draymond Green made a great entry pass for an easy hoop.  The announcers were raving about it and it really was a good play.  Except for the fact that Green totally changes his pivot foot!!  It doesn't get called or even MENTIONED by the announcers.

The thing that frustrates me more than anything is when a ref makes a call because he THINKS something happened.  This is common when a ref standing all the way across the court makes a call when the ref standing right next to the play doesn't.  It also happens when a player pump fakes and the ref THINKS he traveled.  Watch those replays on your DVR - it happens 1-2 times per game - and the guy doesn't travel. 

been and always be the refs, umpires, line judges, chair umpires, and officials fault everytime a Meechigan team or individual does not win their game or match. 

Yeah it's statistically significant, but the cause is more likely the varying talent and styles of play of the teams involved

The refs are always going to help out the home team.  But it's not going to make a difference this Sunday.  OSU has been destroying opponents at home all season.  They beat Duke by 22 at home in December. 

Call me negative all you want but I don't see this game going well.  Especially with how we have looked on the road.  Losing this game won't be because of the refs.