Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. I have not watched a baseball game since last Saturday night, when I worked the Reds-Marlins game (which the Marlins won when Francisco Cordero got lit up for a walk-off homer). On Sunday, I flew to Fort Collins, Colorado, where 150 physics teachers have gathered to grade 100,000 AP physics exams. Grading 50 papers a night, as I do every night when school is in session, barely makes a dent in my brainpower; grading many hundreds of exams per day, where even a single mistake is unacceptable, causes my brain to shut down for the evening. Thus, don’t expect too much from today’s column. I’m thinking that I might post several shorter pieces this week rather than a single long Friday post; keep looking at the site for updates.
Not only have I not watched baseball while in Fort Collins, but I have not been able to follow the European soccer championships, either. Two years ago I couldn’t watch the World Cup because every game occurred during working hours at the AP grading; this year, I have the same trouble with Euro 2008. All I can tell you is, that Orange guy was indeed onside in the Italy game earlier this week.[1]
So, you ask the Nachoman, have you watched any sports at *all* this week? Well, kind of… I saw the last quarter of Tuesday’s game in the NBA finals. I rarely watch NBA basketball, though I am extremely familiar with the college game. The first thing I noticed is that NBA refs simply don’t call fouls. For the entire quarter, Boston’s offense consisted of illegal screens at the top of the key from Kevin Garnett. These weren’t garden variety illegal screens in which the screener shuffles his feet a teeny bit to maintain contact for an extra moment. No, no, these screens involved Mr. Garnett slow dancing with the defender, maintaining contact chest-to-chest contact even as the defender tried to go around the screen by five feet. If Mr. Garnett would only have used his hands, he would have been pass-protecting better than the Houston Texans offensive line.
Of course, I don’t mean to single out Boston for physical play. In response to these illegal screens, the Lakers defenders generally tried to hip-check the man with the ball. The referees never tweeted, so the “jungle ball” continued unabated. I suppose that’s the style of play that David Stern wants…
Speaking of what David Stern wants, untrustworthy sources (i.e. discredited former referee Tim Donaghy) have insinuated that NBA officials have on occasion been given instructions before playoff games as to which team to favor. This comes as no surprise to the Nachoman, nor to casual basketball fans – I’ve heard gossip that “The NBA is fixed” since the late 1980s, when Boston and Los Angeles always played dramatic finals against one another. ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons even provided a possible mechanism for “fixing”games. While Donaghy contended that NBA officials actively and corruptly favored one team over another, Mr. Simmons suggests that the “fixing” occurs via the assignment of honest referees of varying competence. His thought is that a bad basketball referee is more likely than a good one to be swayed by the home crowd; a bad ref is thus LESS likely to make a crucial, gutsy call against the home team late in a game. Mr. Simmons made a list of who he considers to be “excellent” referees and who are the “poor” referees. He noticed that the poor refs tend to be assigned to games in which the league benefits from the home team winning; the excellent refs tend to work games in which the visiting team “should” win.
Though Bill Simmons makes an intriguing case, I’m not ready to buy that the NBA is fixed based on a few coincidences of referee assignment.[2] I don’t completely accept Mr. Simmons’ logic, for one thing – a bad referee is just as likely, I think, to botch calls in favor of the visitors; even if the home crowd effect is detectable, I don’t know that it can have a consistent and significant effect beyond the standard home court advantage. Furthermore, if the league really, really wants one team to win, why take half measures? The Donaghy-style game fixing would be far more likely to produce the league’s desired result.
So, does the Nachoman believe in his heart of hearts that the NBA playoffs are completely above-board? Well, no, I can’t make that statement, because David Stern does not do nearly enough to eliminate all appearance of bias.
Consider the NFL. Fans and teams complain about the officiating every week. Yet, I don’t hear anyone outside of Joey Porter and a few idiot Seattlians ever complaining that bad officiating is intentionally aimed at one team. People simply complain about missed calls. So I ask: How does the NFL avoid the appearance of bias, while the NBA does not?
The answer lies in the transparency of their officiating hierarchy. In the NFL, it is widely known that officials are graded after each game by independent observers, most of whom are themselves former officials. The results of these grades are used to assign crews to postseason games. Even if an official DID want to affect the outcome of a game, he would be kept in line by the rest of his crew – a bad grade for one official could prevent the entire crew from working the playoffs. While these grades are not made public, the process in general IS public knowledge: many have written about it, and crews are allowed to make themselves available to journalists to discuss the process in generalities. Furthermore, director of officiating Mike Pereira makes a weekly appearance on the NFL network (and NFL.com) to answer questions about calls in that week’s games. Though Mr. Pereira himself is hired by the NFL, he, not the league office, has final say on officiating matters. He and his evaluators fill the role of independent oversight – even if the NFL did want to influence the outcome of a game using referees, they would have to get their nefarious scheme past Mr. Pereira, his subordinates who grade the officials, and all seven members of an officiating crew themselves. This is not an easy task.
Even most high school officiating works in a similar manner. A school does not generally hire its favorite referees… rather, the school contacts the local independent officials’ association, who in turn assigns officials based on availability and competence. Those officials who are good enough to work higher level games get those assignments. The association, not the school, is responsible for evaluating the job done by the officials. If, say, the visiting school felt that an official cost them a game, they could complain to the association; if the complaint were valid, the association would (quietly) inform the official who screwed up, who might not get as many choice assignments were he to continue to cause controversy.
My overall point is, officials who report to independent oversight are difficult to corrupt. In 30 years of involvement with sports, I have seen plenty of lousy officiating, plenty of bad calls that help decide games. Only once, ever, have I truly thought that an official definitively favored one team over the other,[3] and one piece of my evidence is that the guilty officials were hired directly by the home school and were NOT connected with any officiating association.
Without independent, transparent oversight, a league opens itself up to reasonable claims of bias. For example, the Big 10 conference oversees its own officials. Consider, then, a late-fall football contest between a team ranked #1 nationally and some scrub team at the bottom of the conference. The Big 10 stands to make many tens of millions if it can send its #1 ranked team to the BCS championship. Should that team lose even once, though, it might end up at a lesser bowl, bringing far, far fewer dollars. The conference therefore has incentive to skew the officiating in favor of the #1 team. Does that happen? Do the officials actually favor a team in this nearly-yearly circumstance? I doubt it… but, unless the officials are evaluated by folks outside the Big 10 commissioner’s office, and until the fact that such evaluations occur is aggressively made public, the suspicion hangs in the air.
And there lies the fault of David Stern. For all I know, he – and the Big 10, for that matter – might well have evaluation processes for officials that are completely independent, unbiased, and accurate. If so, why not tell everyone, including the sports media?[4] No, I’m not expecting individual evaluations of individual officials to be made public, but the people involved, and the general process, is not clear to me. As for Bill Simmons’ complaint, the NFL and Major League Baseball are quite open about how playoff officials are assigned. Why shouldn’t the NBA be just as open? It seems that the NBA’s best response to allegations of referee bias would be to say, “come on, sports journalists, please see for yourself how our officials are held to the highest standard.” Until I see for myself what happens behind closed doors, I will hold a slight suspicion that Simmons- and Donaghy- style accusations MAY, possibly, hold a grain of truth.
Not only have I not watched baseball while in Fort Collins, but I have not been able to follow the European soccer championships, either. Two years ago I couldn’t watch the World Cup because every game occurred during working hours at the AP grading; this year, I have the same trouble with Euro 2008. All I can tell you is, that Orange guy was indeed onside in the Italy game earlier this week.[1]
So, you ask the Nachoman, have you watched any sports at *all* this week? Well, kind of… I saw the last quarter of Tuesday’s game in the NBA finals. I rarely watch NBA basketball, though I am extremely familiar with the college game. The first thing I noticed is that NBA refs simply don’t call fouls. For the entire quarter, Boston’s offense consisted of illegal screens at the top of the key from Kevin Garnett. These weren’t garden variety illegal screens in which the screener shuffles his feet a teeny bit to maintain contact for an extra moment. No, no, these screens involved Mr. Garnett slow dancing with the defender, maintaining contact chest-to-chest contact even as the defender tried to go around the screen by five feet. If Mr. Garnett would only have used his hands, he would have been pass-protecting better than the Houston Texans offensive line.
Of course, I don’t mean to single out Boston for physical play. In response to these illegal screens, the Lakers defenders generally tried to hip-check the man with the ball. The referees never tweeted, so the “jungle ball” continued unabated. I suppose that’s the style of play that David Stern wants…
Speaking of what David Stern wants, untrustworthy sources (i.e. discredited former referee Tim Donaghy) have insinuated that NBA officials have on occasion been given instructions before playoff games as to which team to favor. This comes as no surprise to the Nachoman, nor to casual basketball fans – I’ve heard gossip that “The NBA is fixed” since the late 1980s, when Boston and Los Angeles always played dramatic finals against one another. ESPN.com’s Bill Simmons even provided a possible mechanism for “fixing”games. While Donaghy contended that NBA officials actively and corruptly favored one team over another, Mr. Simmons suggests that the “fixing” occurs via the assignment of honest referees of varying competence. His thought is that a bad basketball referee is more likely than a good one to be swayed by the home crowd; a bad ref is thus LESS likely to make a crucial, gutsy call against the home team late in a game. Mr. Simmons made a list of who he considers to be “excellent” referees and who are the “poor” referees. He noticed that the poor refs tend to be assigned to games in which the league benefits from the home team winning; the excellent refs tend to work games in which the visiting team “should” win.
Though Bill Simmons makes an intriguing case, I’m not ready to buy that the NBA is fixed based on a few coincidences of referee assignment.[2] I don’t completely accept Mr. Simmons’ logic, for one thing – a bad referee is just as likely, I think, to botch calls in favor of the visitors; even if the home crowd effect is detectable, I don’t know that it can have a consistent and significant effect beyond the standard home court advantage. Furthermore, if the league really, really wants one team to win, why take half measures? The Donaghy-style game fixing would be far more likely to produce the league’s desired result.
So, does the Nachoman believe in his heart of hearts that the NBA playoffs are completely above-board? Well, no, I can’t make that statement, because David Stern does not do nearly enough to eliminate all appearance of bias.
Consider the NFL. Fans and teams complain about the officiating every week. Yet, I don’t hear anyone outside of Joey Porter and a few idiot Seattlians ever complaining that bad officiating is intentionally aimed at one team. People simply complain about missed calls. So I ask: How does the NFL avoid the appearance of bias, while the NBA does not?
The answer lies in the transparency of their officiating hierarchy. In the NFL, it is widely known that officials are graded after each game by independent observers, most of whom are themselves former officials. The results of these grades are used to assign crews to postseason games. Even if an official DID want to affect the outcome of a game, he would be kept in line by the rest of his crew – a bad grade for one official could prevent the entire crew from working the playoffs. While these grades are not made public, the process in general IS public knowledge: many have written about it, and crews are allowed to make themselves available to journalists to discuss the process in generalities. Furthermore, director of officiating Mike Pereira makes a weekly appearance on the NFL network (and NFL.com) to answer questions about calls in that week’s games. Though Mr. Pereira himself is hired by the NFL, he, not the league office, has final say on officiating matters. He and his evaluators fill the role of independent oversight – even if the NFL did want to influence the outcome of a game using referees, they would have to get their nefarious scheme past Mr. Pereira, his subordinates who grade the officials, and all seven members of an officiating crew themselves. This is not an easy task.
Even most high school officiating works in a similar manner. A school does not generally hire its favorite referees… rather, the school contacts the local independent officials’ association, who in turn assigns officials based on availability and competence. Those officials who are good enough to work higher level games get those assignments. The association, not the school, is responsible for evaluating the job done by the officials. If, say, the visiting school felt that an official cost them a game, they could complain to the association; if the complaint were valid, the association would (quietly) inform the official who screwed up, who might not get as many choice assignments were he to continue to cause controversy.
My overall point is, officials who report to independent oversight are difficult to corrupt. In 30 years of involvement with sports, I have seen plenty of lousy officiating, plenty of bad calls that help decide games. Only once, ever, have I truly thought that an official definitively favored one team over the other,[3] and one piece of my evidence is that the guilty officials were hired directly by the home school and were NOT connected with any officiating association.
Without independent, transparent oversight, a league opens itself up to reasonable claims of bias. For example, the Big 10 conference oversees its own officials. Consider, then, a late-fall football contest between a team ranked #1 nationally and some scrub team at the bottom of the conference. The Big 10 stands to make many tens of millions if it can send its #1 ranked team to the BCS championship. Should that team lose even once, though, it might end up at a lesser bowl, bringing far, far fewer dollars. The conference therefore has incentive to skew the officiating in favor of the #1 team. Does that happen? Do the officials actually favor a team in this nearly-yearly circumstance? I doubt it… but, unless the officials are evaluated by folks outside the Big 10 commissioner’s office, and until the fact that such evaluations occur is aggressively made public, the suspicion hangs in the air.
And there lies the fault of David Stern. For all I know, he – and the Big 10, for that matter – might well have evaluation processes for officials that are completely independent, unbiased, and accurate. If so, why not tell everyone, including the sports media?[4] No, I’m not expecting individual evaluations of individual officials to be made public, but the people involved, and the general process, is not clear to me. As for Bill Simmons’ complaint, the NFL and Major League Baseball are quite open about how playoff officials are assigned. Why shouldn’t the NBA be just as open? It seems that the NBA’s best response to allegations of referee bias would be to say, “come on, sports journalists, please see for yourself how our officials are held to the highest standard.” Until I see for myself what happens behind closed doors, I will hold a slight suspicion that Simmons- and Donaghy- style accusations MAY, possibly, hold a grain of truth.
The burden is on Mr. Stern to shut the likes of me up with facts.
Next Time I Post...
Might well be in a couple of days. Keep checking back. If you're lucky, I'll help you understand the open and structured evaluation process for AP Physics readers, who are the equivalent of national physics referees.
[1] The defender keeping the Dutch player – Ruud Van Nistelrooy – onside had actually left the pitch due to “injury”. However, since the referee had not granted the defender permission to leave the pitch, the defender was still considered in the on- or off- side ruling. I think.
[2] That said, I have to give Bill credit for one prediction. After Boston went up 2-0, it was clearly in the league’s interest for LA to win game 3 at home. Mr. Simmons predicted that the “poor” refs would be assigned. In his Sunday column, well before referee assignments were made public, Simmons stated that he fully expected that Bennett Salvatore would be assigned to game 3; sure enough, he was.
[3] Woodberry Forest at Fork Union Military Academy, 2006.
[4] It’s possible that the NBA *has* in fact made their processes clear to the media, and I’ve simply failed to notice. But that sounds fishy to me… how likely is it that a sports and sports officiating junkie like the Nachoman would have missed the story? And, why wouldn’t Mr. Stern have reiterated his officiating standards and evaluation processes in the wake of the Donaghy allegations?
[2] That said, I have to give Bill credit for one prediction. After Boston went up 2-0, it was clearly in the league’s interest for LA to win game 3 at home. Mr. Simmons predicted that the “poor” refs would be assigned. In his Sunday column, well before referee assignments were made public, Simmons stated that he fully expected that Bennett Salvatore would be assigned to game 3; sure enough, he was.
[3] Woodberry Forest at Fork Union Military Academy, 2006.
[4] It’s possible that the NBA *has* in fact made their processes clear to the media, and I’ve simply failed to notice. But that sounds fishy to me… how likely is it that a sports and sports officiating junkie like the Nachoman would have missed the story? And, why wouldn’t Mr. Stern have reiterated his officiating standards and evaluation processes in the wake of the Donaghy allegations?
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