Tracking fouls?

[wwcfoa43]

Coaches complaining about the disparity in fouls is one of my pet peeves. Two teams of different skill levels, who are coached differently, who have different strategies and who at points in the game will have different scores will behave differently!

Don't they know that it can be a winning strategy to play more agressively and possibly commit more fouls? Perhaps one team is winning because of this (or losing by less). If we were to "even things up" we would then be allowing one team to benefit from the strategy and then benefit from the evening up.

A few lines I use with coaches when they complain about this:

"You and your players have more control of how many fouls I call than I do."

"All I am doing is keeping track."

[If the team is also winning]. "The score is not the same either. If you want I could make both even."

[If the disparity is not too big.] "It would statistically stranger if the fouls were evely split than unevenly." (I do not use this one much anymore since I have obviously taken more stats courses than most coaches.)

In the end, teams that score more will have more points, teams that travel more will have more travel calls and teams that foul more will have more foul calls. There is nothing in the universe that will or should make these things split evenly.