Referees just want to be liked

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/07/2017 (2995 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It wasn’t the worst call in the CFL this season.

In a league where referees are now expected to call everything, no matter how marginal or inconsequential, there have been plenty of calls that were worse than the phantom illegal contact penalty that cost Karen Kuldys $1 million in last week’s 33-25 Winnipeg Blue Bombers win over the Toronto Argonauts.

That will, of course, come as cold comfort to Kuldys, who had a million bucks taken out of her pocket when an Argos’ kickoff return for a touchdown was called back, negating what would have been the second kickoff return for a touchdown of the game and a big payout to Kuldys as part of a grocery retailer’s promotion.

But in a week in which an especially expensive terrible call once again thrust bad CFL officiating into an uncomfortable spotlight, I thought it was worth a deep dive into why this issue is such a steady drumbeat, year after year.

Why, I wondered, do football officials — and not just in the CFL — seem to get the call so wrong, so often?

At least part of the answer, it turns out, is because referees are lot like the rest of us: they’re easily intimidated and they seek validation and approval wherever they can find it.

Consider:

The nerds at fivethirtyeight.com, who have taken number-crunching to a whole new level in sports analysis, late last year published a study of thousands of NFL plays that found the most serious defensive penalties — things such as pass interference, unnecessary roughness and personal fouls — are called 50 per cent more often in front of the offensive team’s bench than the defensive team’s bench.

The reverse is also true: offensive penalties such as holding are 35 per cent more common if they are run in front of the defensive team’s bench.

In a post entitled “NFL Coaches Yell at Referees Because it Freakin’ Works,” the authors concluded: “… a sideline bias in the NFL is real, and it’s spectacular.”

Just as interesting as those lopsided numbers is the fact the bias appears only in the area between the 32-yard lines, which is where NFL coaches and players are allowed to stand.

If a play takes place outside that area — between the 32 and the goal-line where the teams don’t stand — the study’s authors found any advantage to either the offence or defence disappears.

So what’s happening here?

‘Cue learning’

Are football referees seriously so gullible that a bunch of football coaches and players standing on the sideline throwing their hats and helmets is enough to convince them to throw a flag?

Yep.

“In psychology terms, this process is called cue learning,” wrote authors Noah Davis and Michael Lopez.

“It’s why we laugh longer in the presence of other humans laughing, why we eat more in the presence of overweight company, and why our judgment of persuasive speeches is influenced by the audience’s reaction.”

Now, none of this explains that illegal contact penalty that cost Kuldys a million bucks. That flag was thrown on the Argos’ side of the field, and well downfield, long past the bench where Toronto’s coaches and players were standing.

The research makes you wonder, though: if the infraction in question had occurred earlier in the play and directly in front of the Toronto bench, might the official have been swayed not to throw such a marginal flag with all those Argos coaches and players standing in front of him?

It is the stuff of Kuldys’s nightmares.

Home-field bias

All of which brings us to the second type of bias studies have shown referees — and not just those in football — exhibit: home-field bias.

Numerous studies of everything from Premier League soccer to the NHL to the NBA to the NFL have found the biggest single driver of home-field advantage in professional sports is the effect the fans in the stands have on the referees.

The studies have shown home teams in every sport consistently have a statistically meaningful advantage over visitors in terms of penalty calls. The studies have shown the bigger and louder the hometown crowd, the more pronounced that bias. The studies have even shown the proximity of the stands to the field-influence bias: the closer fans are to the field, the bigger the referee’s bias towards the home team.

In one United Kingdom soccer study, researchers found home teams that played in stadiums with running tracks that separated the stands and fans from the field and officials had more calls go against them than teams that played in stadiums without running tracks.

Add it all up and it is probably not entirely a coincidence the Argos had a touchdown called back in a game played in the home of the Blue Bombers at Investors Group Field.

Memo to Bombers fans: you matter, perhaps more than you knew.

Indeed, it is probably also not entirely a coincidence a Bombers team that has played two of its three games so far this season at home is also the CFL leader right now — by a mile — in fewest penalties.

While Winnipeg had a Week 1 bye and has played less games than most of the league’s nine teams, it is still statistically noteworthy the Bombers have been flagged 16 times for 155 yards. The B.C. Lions have the next-fewest penalties, with 24 infractions for 212 yards in four games. 

The disciplined Bombers’ play — or, at least, a lack of calls against them — has been no small contributor in the team’s 2-1 record heading into Friday’s contest in Vancouver against the Lions.

Too much yelling?

You have to wonder if Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea gets some of the credit for his team taking so few penalties. While those studies show that coaches yelling at referees on the sidelines seems to work, it’s been my observation over the years that it’s a very fine line and too much yelling — and whining — by a coach can also work against you with the refs.

O’Shea seems to have struck a balance: you’ll see him during a game letting the refs know when he disagrees with a call, but it’s usually in the form of an on-field conversation instead of a tantrum.

That’s in stark contrast to, say, Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach Kent Austin, who has never seen a call against his team he felt was justified and is a notorious on-field complainer to the referees.

I’ve got no way to quantify this, but I’ve watched a lot of CFL football and I cannot remember the last time the Ticats got the benefit of a meaningful close call. If the call is close, it seems to go against Austin and the Ticats every time, and Austin has only himself — not the refs — to blame for that.

That includes in the 2014 Grey Cup game, when a potentially go-ahead punt return TD by the Ticats late in the game was taken off the board by a marginal illegal block call.

That call cost the Ticats a Grey Cup, just like last week’s call cost Kuldys a million bucks.

CFL officials work in mysterious — but also entirely predictable — ways.

They’re people, just like the rest of us. Like the rest of us, they just want to be liked, really, really badly.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek