New study: Basketball referees do indeed favor the home team.

And they make make-up calls. And they make more calls against the team in the lead. And that discrepancy grows if the game's on national TV.

In short, there's a study published in The Journal Of Sport Sciences, using a 365-game sample, that appears to prove that everything you already believe about basketball officiating is correct.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091123/ap_on_sp_co_ne/bkc_referee_bias

I await five pages of replies running from "I told you so, motherfuckers! I always told you so!" to "I knew those cheating bastards robbed us!", in the latter case listing multiple examples of exactly who was robbed by which bastards.

 

Shocking. Did the government pay for this?

 

Did they do a study on how the NBA rigs its draft?

 

No surprise here. Merely stating the obvious.

 

I can understand how if you are an official 15,000 people voicing their opinion can have an unconscious influence on your decision. But the make-up calls are bullshit and always drive me nuts.

 

I never understood why refs checked the scorebook at the half. Now I know why.

 

Dog bites man.

 

I've never understood why basketball coaches complain if the foul count isn't even. Well, I understand it - it isn't like they complain when their team picked up fewer fouls - but is there any particular reason the foul count *should* be even?

 

Not if the officials are rotating properly.