By Chewy
I like to gamble. I bet on games every single day. Currently, I am an avid hockey bettor. I love hockey. I love the players; they play hard and you don’t read about them or hear about them in the news except for their accomplishments on the ice. I love the action and the drama around goal scoring, power plays, and the excitement of OT and shootouts. The playoff action is incredible and the championship is awesome. Most importantly, I find the officiating to be relatively neutral and unbiased. And when a call is missed, I feel the refs do try to make up for it when they can. This has been an unspoken rule if you will throughout the history of hockey and it seems to pretty much work out ok. You don’t hear a lot of head coaches or players calling out the refs for bad or missed calls a lot. Of course, no league allows for the criticism of the refs, but I do think when egregious things happen, at least some players or commentators bring up specifics detailing the faults. You don’t hear a lot of that around hockey.
I’m writing this article because I’ve noticed in the NFL what I believe is a bias in officiating. While no officiating in any major league sport is perfect (and I mean NO OFFICATING!), it seems to me that the referees are playing an increasingly deciding role in the outcome of games. I am not sure if this is a result of sports betting becoming more prevalent and therefore the refs feel pressure to help a side, or if the league is in cahoots, or if I am completely imagining it. But I will give you some data points from this year’s last playoff games to make some points. You can decide for yourself if I am completely off base.
For one thing, let’s be perfectly clear about one thing. The refs, the players, and the owners are all aware of sports betting. The degree to which one individual pays attention to the spreads and totals, I can obviously not speak to as everyone will have a different experience. I am sure some players and owners and refs don’t care at all. And I am equally sure some care a lot. But what I can tell you for sure regarding refs is this: “When it came to pro basketball, I didn’t need a roll of the dice, a flip of the coin, a spin of the wheel, a turn of the cards, or an Ouija board. All I needed was the NBA’s daily Master List of Referees. I usually knew which team was going to win based on which referees had been assigned to the game, their personalities, and the relationships they had with the players and coaches of the teams involved.” This is a quote from Tim Donaghy, the NBA ref that was sent to prison for betting on NBA games. What’s telling about this quote is that it doesn’t mention a word about refs knowing the spreads or fixing games. What it shows is that refs are human and these human beings like and dislike certain players, teams, and owners. It’s just natural that this would be the case. And this like and dislike, which I’ll just call bias, would affect the outcome of the NBA games Donaghy bet on and he would take advantage of his knowledge of the refs in play. Unrelatedly, he also alleged (never proved) the NBA encouraged the refs to extend playoff series as far as possible but I think everyone would pretty much agree that this feels logical, regardless of whether it flies in the face of fair play. I mean literally, everyone benefits from an extended series except the lowly sports bettor.
Ok, you ask, so what. The guy is a scum bag and went to prison and you’re quoting him as some sort of guru on human nature. Well, my point here is that Donaghy didn’t say refs were cheating. He just said he knew their biases. So my point is I think we can accept that at the very least, ref bias exists, and in a worst-case scenario, refs fixed games. I’d prefer to believe actual criminal activity is not happening and refs are just not able to overcome their desire to see a certain team/player/owner succeed or another team/player/owner fail. And now we arrive at the crux of my discussion.
“Is there holding by the offensive line and defensive line on every play? Yes.” This is a quote from Tom Brady arguably the best player to ever play in the NFL. I’m willing to take his statement as true. So if we all agree that some penalty COULD be called on both sides of the ball then logically speaking, in general, the number of penalties called SHOULD approximate one another for both teams. Certainly one could say this isn’t always the case because some NFL teams are less disciplined, less talented on either line, etc, etc. I agree 100% with that and we see a significant difference in the number of penalties called in regular season games. I would argue then, as we move into playoff games, that the number of penalties called on each team should be very close to one another, given that playoff teams should represent the best of the league. I think this is a reasonable line of logic to follow.
However, with respect to the Kansas City Chiefs’ run to the Lombardi trophy, this was NOT the case. In the first round of the playoffs, the Chiefs played the Jags. Total penalties, 8. Three were charged to KC and 5 to the Jags. Not a massive difference, but still 37.5% v 62.5%. Alright, so not equal but not bad. Next up were the Bengals, where KC eeked out a 3-point win. If you all recall this game, it was a nail-biter and Cincy really looked like they could pull this out. I’ll bet you though, that you could not guess the penalty difference. Total penalties in that game, 13. Chiefs charged with four (!!!) and Cincy with NINE! Cincy had 2.25 times as many penalties as their opponent. This wasn’t some bottom-ranked team. This was the conference championship game and they were called for more than 2x the number of penalties. I’m sorry, I just don’t see it. I do not accept that they played ball two times more foul-intensive than the Chiefs. And anyone that watches these playoff games knows how incredibly important these fouls can be. It’s not only the yards lost or gained, its field position, its time of possession, and the rhythm of a drive. These flags are INCREDIBLY important and meaningful. Ok ok, you say, well Cincy O line was a disaster and maybe those were all holding calls. No, they did have offensive holding calls but only two. The rest were miscellaneous, including that famous and rightfully called roughing flag that led to the KC winning field goal (that was preceded by a very questionable grounding call against Cincy followed by a possible missed non-call for a block in the back on the subsequent punt return by KC). Ok fine. Maybe it was an anomaly. Let’s examine the Super Bowl, the championship game of the world. Surely we can’t expect to see any sort of significant difference here in the number of fouls. Again we are accepting as a given that there COULD be a call on every single play. Want to guess the outcome here? I’m sure you already have by now. Total penalties in Super Bowl LVII, nine. Only three apparently committed all game by the champs the Chiefs, while six were charged to the Eagles. Again, a 2-1 difference or 100% more is called AGAINST the Eagles. You’re talking about a team that had one of the best if not THE BEST O and D line combos in the game. Forget the extra third downs. Forget any missed block in the back or holding calls. The numbers speak for themselves. You decide if there was bias to help the Chiefs hoist the trophy or not.
What’s the point you ask? The point is as a bettor, I don’t want referee bias influencing the outcome. As a matter of fact, I don’t want ANY penalties influencing the outcome unless they are so clear that they absolutely must be called. The point is I am starting to believe the absurd conspiracies saying maybe the groundskeeper was in on it. The point is, I am still grouching about referees well after the season is over as I’m incredibly concerned about how they may impact next season. The point is, betting is real money and a bet on a professional sport should be based on the talent on the field not the desires of a couple of men and women wearing stripes. And ultimately my point is the NFL as a league should understand that they are losing credibility with the public as the perception that the games are fixed in some way becomes more prevalent. I used to love the NFL but after this last year, it is solidly in third place to me with respect to major league sports. The league needs to fix the obvious issues with the referees once and for all.
