Influencing refs
 

Thought some here would find this stat analysis of NFL calls interesting.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features...espn:frontpage

My opinion of studies like this are best described by quoting Benjamin Disreali: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

MTD, Sr.

Utter horse excrement with a large dose of new wave psycho babble.

Lets keep in mind what happens when you start with a result or conclusion in mind and then go searching out data to support it . . .

That being said, at all levels game management is an issue. One of the factors in game management is not allowing this to escalate (getting it early, getting the ones you have to get, getting the first one, etc) If you are proximate to stronger reactions incited by no calls/calls I don't think you are making calls because of the reaction BUT would simply be human nature to ensure you made calls that limited the reaction and escalation.

Ie. You pass on a borderline call in a game where no one seems to care or notice you move on. While if you pass on a borderline call in a game and now kids/coaches fired up and game starts getting chippier; you make sure you get what you need to from now on to clean the game up. You aren't changing calls or making calls because they react but you understand that managing their reactions and emotions may require you to make more tighter calls or even unsportsmanlike calls to manage the game.

Two words:

Confirmation bias.

Hmm. Is there any of that in the reaction to this data in the posts here? Seems like there is just an assumption the data must be wrong . . .

Mind you, I'm not at all arguing for the studies, I haven't looked at them closely enough. As refs, we certainly believe that we are fully independent and uninfluenced by yelling and crowds. But what, to me, is interesting about the 538 NFL analysis, is that it didn't look at the plays themselves and try to say whether or not they were good calls (itself subjective), it only looked at the location of the play and the fouls that were called -- an objective criteria.* I do think it is interesting that there was a measurable difference in the number of calls favoring a team in front of its own bench versus the other -- by very high level refs. Correlation is not causation, etc., etc. Similarly, the soccer referee noise level study is interesting -- I'd like to see more about the details, but I believe I heard a bit about this study somewhere else, and they used high level soccer referees for that study.

These studies do *suggest* (notice I didn't say prove) that even those of us who think we are immune are more affected by the noise and the coaches than we think we are. As a referee (I'm a soccer ref), I think it is something to think about and be aware of -- not to obsess over but be aware that there is some reason to think I might not be as unfazed as I think I am and to pay attention to the possibility.

That would be changing calls.

As a stats analyst, I don't see an issue with the analysis in the OP.

I'm not changing calls based on crowd reaction, however I might alter my filter a bit if the players are getting chippy and we need to reign it in. I've done that in crowded gyms, and I've done it with empty gyms. I've done it with vocal coaches, and with quiet coaches.

There may be a statistical correlation with chippy games and vocal crowds/coaches, but I can assure you coach input shouldn't change the way I'm calling. The higher you get, the more scrutiny there is with game film, so I'd venture to guess those calls are even less likely to be altered.

And I just read the article. I'm not going to pretend to speak for NFL refs on this, since my football experience is very limited in context.

Statistically, I'd be looking for other correlating variables and need to see the raw numbers. I really don't have time to look into it, though.

And yes, there's perhaps a bit of bias coming from officials who read this, because we know better. We know better because we know as well as anyone the pressure to please a sideline or crowd, so we actively fight it until it no longer affects us. As we get to higher levels, the only crowd who matters is the crowd of officials evaluating the games we do.

1. Yes that is very interesting trend and worthy of further study; however, a contributing factor to that bias could be that when Coach has his team in-front of him i.e., in his half of th court---whether they be on offense or defense--he is communicating with them and they are listening [and believing] to Coach's because they are in closer earshot. THis in turn helps them to either execute offense better or impose stronger smarter defense. Just sayin...the proposed "coach proximity' effect. This proposal could be checked for by parsing the data by "First Half vs Second Half" to see if: Team A is on defense --do they cause more fouls/violations on the offense then? Then, Team A on offense--do they get more fouls/violations in their favor than on the defense?

2. Yes there are subconconcious effects--your threshold for tolerance gets lowered which in turn leads you to make more calls as you said "tighten the game".