Quote:
Originally Posted by mbcrowder
What's interesting to me is that if you actually look at the information available (and I have), the idea of home cooking is a fallacy. I saw numbers from all reported games in one very large association for football for a 2 year period. Over 10000 penalties called in total - home team had less than a tenth of a percent less penalties called on them ... and had just over a tenth of a percent MORE yardage called on them.
What most people who cry "home cooking" don't realize is that the officials (regardless of sport) are for the most part calling games for FAR more than just the particular home team of that game - and with the majority of games being District games ... most of these officials end up calling home games for BOTH teams in a particular contest. The idea that there's bias at this level is ludicrous. Take the same thing to NCAA and it's the same - officials work for the CONFERENCE, not the home teams. Ditto MLB/NFL/NBA.
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I've heard this nonsense before, too, and I can only laugh. We flagged a coach for USC a couple of weeks ago -- he was p!ssed and looked at the crew card and saw I was from a particular town. Apparently his hometown (100 miles from where he lives now) and my "hometown" were rivals back in the early 1990s and said I hated him because I was "from [that town]."
Let's see: I moved to Wisconsin 10 years ago and only moved to my house in [that town] 3 years ago. I've been in his hometown exactly once, for a football scrimmage two years ago. Couldn't have been treated nicer there, either. And why would I know that a random HS coach was from that town in the first place? Delusions of grandeur on his part, no doubt.
Let's just say it's rare we flag a coach for USC, but my HL was spot on in doing it that night. What's funny is I drove 100 miles from where I live to work this game, was assigned by the conference, and *still* had to hear that I was (somehow) biased against the visiting coach. And BTW, we threw exactly 5 flags against his team the entire night, including the USC -- one less than we threw against the home team.