Every once in a great while, a message board will yield something remarkably similar to fruit, as long as you're counting good concepts and interesting questions as fruit. Otherwise, it's mostly dick jokes and fans with the distinct smell of dumbass on their breath (on both sides, I'm sure). But sometimes, there's a man, and I won't say hero because, what's a hero? But sometimes there's a man...
Whoa
Lost my train of thought.
Aw, hell, I done introduced it enough.
I was trolling around on an Ohio State message board when this came to my attention: a thread entitled "alarming fact that OSU is getting the screw." It was perfectly set up - and fit right in with the Buckeye disrespect mantra. Ohhhhh - of course! Ohio State has been getting screwed all these years! That's why they've only appeared in 3 National Titles games in the past 6 years, and have dominated the Big Ten, beaten Michigan to a bloody pulp, and have a recruiting class lined up that will make the '92 dream team look like FUCKING AMATEURS (football...basketball...whatever).
Then I actually read it.
The crux of the argument is this: For the past three seasons, Ohio State's opponents have been the least penalized on a yards/game basis than any team in the country. In 2007, Ohio State benefited from 37.2 yards per game from opposing team's penalties, 119th in the country. It's the same story from 2006, and 2005 - 29 and 35 yards/game respectively, both dead last in the NCAA. Them's the facts - inscrutable as ever. However, there must be another reason besides "OMG tOSU is getting SCREWED" right?
Right.
Theory: Big Ten Officials Don't Call Penalties
Conference ref's are all different. They're different in what they'll let teams get away with, what they'll call automatically, and the frequency with which they'll call it. Football is an odd sport in that there is probably a penalty on every play. The Big Ten's best player last year, Jake Long, admitted to "holding" as one of his favorite strategies, illuminating what has become the popular mantra amongst those playing the sport at a high level: it's a penalty if you get caught, an advantage otherwise.
The Big Ten seems particularly adept at playing by those rules - mostly because the ref's allow it. Of the 119 teams in NCAA, the vast majority of the Big Ten falls in the bottom 30 for penalties against - the notable outliers being Northwestern and Indiana who rank 51 and 21 respectively (important for later). Since the majority of games are played in conference using the same set of Big Ten officials, it stands to reason that Ohio State has the fewest penalty yards against at least partly because of the conference they play in. 4 of the 11 Big Ten teams fall in the bottom 10 of the rankings. To put it in perspective, the other teams in the bottom ten break down as follows: 2 MAC, 1 SEC, 1 Big 12, 1 Mountain West, 2 ACC. But this can't be the sole reason why Ohio State is ranked dead last over the past 3 years - if it were simply a conference bias, then there would be just as much chance that any other Big Ten team would be ranked at the bottom of the pile. There is something else going on here, and it's a bit...fishy.
Theory: Underdogs Get The Calls
In order to take on this theory, we need to establish something of a baseline understanding of how penalties work. The assumption is that teams do not consciously foul certain teams more than others. As I mentioned before, penalties occur on nearly every play - what matters is how/when they're called. For purposes of this discussion, I will assume that teams don't have specific agendas on penalties, and that they occur randomly throughout any game, regardless of opponent.
That being said, it is interesting to look at the rankings of each conference in terms of which teams gain the most yards on penalties. The top three in some of the major conferences with their final record in parenthesis:
ACC
2007
Duke (1-11)
Florida State (8-5)
Boston College (9-3)
2006
Duke (0-12)
Georgia Tech (9-5)
NC State (3-9)
2005
Clemson(8-4)
North Carolina (5-6)
Georgia Tech (7-6)
Big XII
2007
Kansas State (5-7)
Texas Tech (9-4)
Baylor (3-9)
2006
Baylor (4-8)
Texas (10-3)
Iowa State (4-8)
2005
Kansas (7-5)
Texas Tech (9-3)
Missouri (7-5)
Big Ten
2007
Indiana (7-6)
Northwestern (6-6)
Purdue (8-5)
2006
Indiana (5-7)
Northwestern (4-8)
Iowa (6-7)
2005
Wisconsin (10-3)
Penn State (11-1)
Northwestern (7-5)
There you have it - out of three conferences (only 3 because I don't have time to do the rest, and frankly, I see nothing that would suggest a different outcome) the teams that benefitted the most by officiating are by and large the underdogs of the conference. There are notable exceptions in the 2005 Big Ten season and Texas - the only teams on the list to crack 10 wins. Excepting those, this collection of teams is pretty "meh" and was probably an underdog in the majority of their conference games. Duke and Indiana led the ACC and Big Ten in opponent penalties for 2 years running with a combined record of 13-36. They were underdogs who got the calls.
The aggregate record of the teams above over a 3 year span is 172-161. If you throw out just 2 wins per team that came against the presumably lack-luster OOC games, you get 118-161. I could have made that 3 weak OOC games/team but given the subjectivity, I wanted to low-ball.
The upshot? The above teams, with some exception, sucked hard. And yet - somehow - they got all the calls. Meanwhile, teams like Ohio State (conference champs), Wake Forest (Division champs, conference champs), and Oklahoma (generally awesome) are somehow not getting the calls (they are all either at, or near the bottom of the ranks in every year profiled). It would stand to reason that a weaker team would need the benefit of penalties more than a stronger team would need to commit them, but no. Instead, we see teams that spend most of their time as underdogs getting the most yardage out of penalties.
I cannot, and will not speculate that refs are consciously pushing an underdog agenda, nor will I say Vegas is running things, Ref's are trying to control the spread, etc. For Big Ten fans, we need to remember the first theory - Big Ten refs generally don't call as many penalties as refs from other conferences, but we can also point to empirical evidence that suggests that the favored team in a matchup, for whatever reason, is most likely going to be penalized more than the underdog. So next time you're playing Iowa, Mr. Ohio State fan, and you start screaming "over the line" and bitching about the refs...and I hate to concede this...
you may be right.
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