I think I remember that somebody posted in this forum that a study showed that officials contributed to home court advantage. The recent thread about the Duke/MD game reminded me about the possibility. I am unable to find any reference to such a study on the Internet. I can find studies that suggest that a home court advantage exists, but I can't find one that concludes that officials are part of the advantage. Is my memory about the post accurate? If so, does anybody have a citation?

I vaguely remember a post about that "study." What I remember most is that the "logic" behind the study was flawed, even laugable. Some of the "statistics" that the writer used to "support" a home bias by the officials were silly and could best described by the unlearned fan's cry of "that's a reach." :)

Z

Holy air quotes Batman!

Not sure which study you are reffering to but Frank and Gilovich of Cornell University did a pretty good study in 1988 to show that the color of the players uniform can affect perceptions.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...v22/ai_6723172

The first part of this article just details a correlation which Frank and Gilovish admit doesn't prove anything. However half way down the article you can read about the follow up experiment that has pretty sound methodology.



I've also read about a study that had people rate soccer matches on tape with and without sound. Those that watched the tape with sound were more likely to penalize the visiting team. The group that watched the tape with sound were also more likely to have the same calls that the officials had at the actual game.