General

Every Conspiracy Theory You’ve Ever Had About College Basketball Refs Is True

Nov 17, 2009, 10:00 PM UTC

â†µâ†µIf you are a fan of college basketball, you know the impotent rage â†µthat goes along with virtually any game, when Ed Hightower (above)—it’s always â†µEd Hightower—and two ugly bald white guys make up the rules of â†µbasketball as they go along. This year promises to be extra fun since â†µthe NCAA added the NBA’s no-charge circle without actually adding the circle.â†µ

â†µâ†µIf you’re an engineer too, you know that you’re being irrational â†µbecause you want to see your team win and that basketball refereeing is â†µprobably poor but fair. You don’t believe in black helicopters. â†µ

â†µâ†µSorry, rational thinker, but score one for the black helicopter crowd, according to a study co-authored by a professor at Indiana: â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥An examination of 365 major conference games played during the â†µâ‡¥2004-05 college men’s basketball season found a clear pattern of an â†µâ‡¥increased probability of a foul on the team with fewer fouls, the â†µâ‡¥visiting team and the team that is leading.â†µâ†µâ†µIf you’re on the road, or leading, or in better shape foul-wise, â†µyou’re about to get screwed. You knew this in your heart, and now there â†µare real actual unbiased facts to make it up: yes, that moving â†µscreen call was the crappiest crap that’s ever been crapped. Yes, that â†µcharge was ridiculous. Yes, you should try to make Hightower’s head â†µexplode with your mind. â†µ

â†µ

â†µThe economics professors who ran this study were just like all of â†µus—suspicious—but even they were surprised by the magnitude of the â†µincompetence here:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥“We had suspected that, having played and watched â†µâ‡¥basketball,” [Kyle J. Anderson, a visiting assistant professor of business economics at Kelley-Indianapolis] added. “But once we started to run the data, I â†µâ‡¥think the magnitude of the effect was much more than we had ever â†µâ‡¥anticipated. We thought that this was going be a very small â†µâ‡¥effect.”â†µâ†µâ†µThe most ridiculous stat dropped: if a home team is â†µtrailing in the foul count by five fouls—i.e. they’ve established that â†µthey’re considerably more likely to foul than the opponent—69% of the â†µtime the next foul goes on the visitors. The effect steadily increases â†µas the disparity grows. Evening the calls up is a real motivator. â†µ

â†µâ†µThis is why Big Ten message boards have been tracking home-road free â†µthrow disparities for years. In 2007, home teams took 323 more free throws in â†µconference games. In 2008 it actually got worse, with home teams taking â†µ387 more free throws. Some of that is end-of-game fouling by losing road â†µteams—road teams lose a lot in the Big Ten—but disparities that â†µlarge are about more than that, as the study shows.â†µ

â†µâ†µThis can only be incompetence. If a foul is a foul, then none of â†µthese trends would exist. Several of them would be reversed: presumably â†µthe team that’s ahead is better at basketball and less prone to fouling, â†µand that’s even more obviously true for the team with fewer fouls on it.â†µ

â†µâ†µLet this be cold comfort to you the next time your team goes on the â†µroad and Ed Hightower puts your star on the bench for looking at him â†µfunny. They are out to get you.â†µ

â†µâ†µ(HT: John Gasaway. Deadspin on the photo.)â†µ

â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

See More: