Study shows shorter referees call more fouls
 

This post gave me a good laugh today!
I can't wait to see Chuck's response.

*Note that the photo is of Joey Crawford and that he is the only NBA official named in the article.

I resemble that remark! :D

MTD, Sr.

It's all in the angles
 

I always thought that it's because fouls look different from below than they do from above . . .

So, this guy calls about 1000 fouls each game?


http://www.espn.go.com/media/nba/200.../g_brawl_i.jpg

A total waste of time. The concusion being that a "short" referee would call one more foul over a period of 480 minutes (10 games?). The only thing I find surprising is that it wasn't funded by the federal government. It's useless and dumb enough.

This Just In...
 

Smart coaches yell at the referees less.

In deference to APG, I refuse to comment on this article. :D

It's a foul rate per player. So one more foul per two games. It appears to just be some graduate school research. Why the strong negative reaction? Personally I find studies like this a fascinating window into how the sports are officiated.

Study: Taller Officials Let the Game Get Out of Control by Calling Fewer Fouls

I agree. I find these things interesting -- and I agree with Rob as to why this is the case. It makes sense that officials who see things from slightly different angles would have slightly different frequency of calls.

I find it to be another excuse/reason to attack officials. Any coach (at any level) that happens to see the study/article might come tothe conclusion that taller refs are going to give them a better game. Hogwash.

It causes me to wonder why the variable (height) was chosen. Why not skin color? Baldness? Birthdate? Weight? Just seems like a silly waste of time to me.

I mostly agree. The choice of the study is nothing more than a veiled attack suggesting that people that were likely not high level players (that being a somewhat reasonable assumption since height is clearly and advantage for players) can't understand the game.

If instead, they had broken down the foul rate by 20 different criteria and presented it as a whole, it might have been a valid study.

As An Elephant's Eye ...
 

Not quite. It's: Taller Officials Don't Call Game Interrupters And, Therefore, Do A Better Job At Keeping The Game Flowing

I'm A Virgo, I Perform Tasks With Machine Like Planning And Accuracy ...
 

So? What's your sign good looking?

Mine is Scorpio. ;)

MTD, Sr.

I would hope coaches are not reading the Journal of Sports Economics. We have enough on our plate dispelling rules myths, we shouldn't have to deal with this BS too.

On the other hand, one man's silly waste of time is another man's masters thesis.

I didn't see anything that suggested that the calls were incorrect. People can draw whatever conclusion they want, but the study/article doesn't imply that more fouls is a bad thing. I've heard "That was a foul" on a no-call just as much as I've heard "He didn't touch him" on a called foul. Any coach might also come to the conclusion that shorter refs are going to give them a better game.

I'd actually be curious to see a study on other factors too. Officials aren't robots and certainly aren't all the same. If heavier officials for example, had a slightly different rate of foul calls than skinnier officials, that would be interesting too.

Ahh, so true!

If this was a study on the number of calls calls made by officials based on the officials height, why would they have to adjust the study based on race and experience???

I'm sure there are others with more statistics background who can give a better answer ... but basically, in order to make a claim that is statistically significant, they need to eliminate other potential causes as not significant.

I saw a study that stated left-handed officials with blue eyes call more fouls on players with even numbered jerseys and nose hair in games held on weekends!

I hope the league gets this straightened out. It's not fair to favor teams whose players wear only odd numbered jerseys and trim their nose hair during warm-ups. :mad:

Simply Put...
 

Correlation does not imply causation.

So they only included short Hispanic officials with less than 5 years experience in this study????

I totally agree with you. I think if you are going to use height, you better look at other factors or classifications.

Also so what if they call more fouls, what does that have to do with calling a better game?

Peace

I think there are a couple of ways to do this, but the easiest would be to put the officials in comparative categories and look at the results within those categories.

But I've only taken enough statistics to get myself into trouble.

Pretty much the same classes as the guys who wrote this study!:D

Referees with OCD call more fouls on players with uneven socks. :)

Since most players wear 2 (or 4 if they double up, or 6 ...) socks, I wouldn't think there would be enough players with uneven socks to have a valid study.

Keep in mind that this study was not done with the purpose of evaluating officials. Read the abstract from the study. The NBA simply provides one mechanism/set of data for testing a theory about bias in the workplace (any workplace).

If the purpose of the study was to help officials become more consistent, then they certainly would have looked at other factors/classifications.


Abstract

Given the vast number of observations in a transparent environment, the interaction between players and referees in the National Basketball Association (NBA) provides a real-world laboratory that allows for observation and testing of implicit height-based biases (the so-called “Napoleon Complex”). Controlling for a plethora of referee-specific characteristics and including 4,463 regular season games from 2008 to 2012, we find that (i) more personal fouls are called when a relatively shorter three-person officiating crew is working and (ii) no more or fewer fouls are called when games involve relatively taller players. Such biases are probably not large enough to impact game outcomes but could affect gambling markets. Our findings support the conclusion that relatively shorter NBA referees officiate basketball games differently than their taller peers. The analysis spotlights an oft-suggested but rarely studied bias in a workplace where employees are heavily scrutinized and monitored.

LOL, yeah probably. You sound a bit bitter here, though. :)

I wonder why...:mad:

Stupid academicians and their "studies".:p

No need to worry; no one reads it. At least not people that are not economic profs who need SOMETHING to research and publish. Even then, the only readers of this article are those who want to try and refute it.

As someone with a degree in economics, this is somewhat interesting. I say somewhat since there isn't much economic here -- its mainly statistics.

I haven't read the study, but I'd bet money its flawed for one huge reason: if I, a 6 foot nothing (with the emphasis on nothing) official would be on many games with what is characterized as short, medium, AND tall crews. My height, I'd say about average or maybe slightly below given the height of basketball officials, would not skew the crew average of many games. If I worked with 2 short guys, or 1 short and one average like me, we'd be short. Likewise, if I worked with 2 talls or one tall and one average, we'd probably be a tall crew. I could be the one calling all the fouls -- or to give sufficient weight to the findings of the study, several average guys, all factored in the results could be the ones calling all the fouls. If it can be shown that there are more average guys than short guys, then the average guys, not the short ones, could be the ones causing the skewed numbers.

We don't know who on the crew is calling the fouls if they take it from a per game basis. Tall guys could conceivably call more fouls if they're working with exclusively shorter partners, or could call fewer fouls if they're working with guys of similar heights.

The bottom line is I don't think the author understands how basketball is officiated.

During a film breakdown session at camp a number of years ago Nunez (pictured) talked to us about how as a short guy he has to work that much harder to obtain angles then a taller referee. It would almost seem that taller officials would call more fouls because they can see more (outside of their primary). I remember talking to an official that is 6'10" and he would talk about how he has to be careful b/c he can see over the players (HS). He said he was more likely to not move for angles b/c he was less likely to need to as opposed to a 5'5" partner. Obviously this is not the case for a lot of plays in our primary because we have to see in between the offensive/defensive player.

The analogy in football that a taller quarterback has an advantage b/c he can see over the offensive line comes to mind. Same principle can be applied to a very tall referee compared with a short referee.

I don't have much of a point just thinking through some factors that might cause there to be a difference. :cool: