Rogers Redding, national coordinator for NCAA football officiating, says referees are human but unfailingly scrupulous. “I can unequivocally say that I have never seen any sign of bias on the part of officials at any level,” says Redding, who officiated NCAA football for 18 years.
While admitting “my bias is to be defensive about this,” Redding faults Brymer’s research for failing to account for whether the fouls analyzed were correctly called. “Some teams are just better” at avoiding penalties, he says. The study also doesn’t establish a baseline from which to judge variations in calls, Redding says. “What’s the expectation of the number of fouls that would be called in the absence of bias? We don’t know.”
NCAA refs undergo training year-round, from spring practice scrimmages to fortnightly videos prepared by Redding. “This is an avocation,” he says, with refs dreaming of being selected to work a bowl game or, the pinnacle, a national championship. Botching penalty calls can cost refs those opportunities—and their jobs. Spokespeople for the Power 5 conferences either declined to comment or didn’t respond to interview requests.
Barry Mano, founder and president of the 22,000-member National Association of Sports Officials, wishes Brymer had included fouls like offsides and such decisions as ball spots. “Very few things in officiating aren’t discretionary,” he says. However, Mano concedes that officials could be susceptible to unconscious pressures and thinks it reasonable to consider moving refs out from under conference control. “The perception of our impartiality is important,” he says.
If one assumes zero bias on the part of on-field officials, Brymer says, his data should show greater consistency among calls. Instead, “where officials from some conferences are systematically calling it one way, other conference officials call it another way. Individual people and crews will have their own idiosyncratic ways of calling games. But this is more than that.” The refs are subject to the scrutiny of large organizations, he says, “which we in business all know is subject to money and power.”
As an assistant professor at Miami of Ohio’s Farmer School of Business, Brymer, 43, usually writes about such esoterica as the use of human capital in corporations. He grew up in Florida, and became a Florida State fan when he lived on the same block as legendary Seminoles coach Bobby Bowden. Brymer was in the stands for the 2003 “Swindle in the Swamp,” when ACC refs were pilloried for questionable calls that helped his team beat archrival Florida.
While earning his Ph.D. at Texas A&M, he came to sympathize with Aggie fans who believed that all close calls favored the University of Texas. “I reached a breaking point,” Brymer says. Weary of fans whining about refs without empirical evidence, he decided to see if he could find any. “At least I’m bringing myself peace,” he says.
Earlier research he presented at an MIT sports analytics conference drew criticism from the NCAA’s Redding. In an e-mail exchange, Redding told Brymer the study oversimplified things by merely using total penalty yards to gauge bias, without accounting for the different types of fouls called or other factors.
Seeking a more precise measuring stick, Brymer bought four years of data—38,871 penalties, including offsetting and declined calls—from SportSource Analytics, a firm that provides data to the committee that chooses the four playoff teams. Working with Miami business students Mickey Whitford and Michael Macey, he analyzed it against half a dozen variables, including home field, the Las Vegas betting line, and “game outcome uncertainty,” which discounts fouls called in blowouts while accounting for tight games in which refs might be reluctant to toss late flags.
Brymer accounted for officiating crews from different conferences and distinguished games between conference foes from those between teams from different conferences. (The away team’s conference usually provides the on-field officials.) He defined flagship teams as those with an all-time winning percentage above 60 percent and protected teams as those ranked highly in Associated Press polls.