jimmy eat jazz
Well-Known Member
There's a fascinating article in the Jan 15 Sports Illustrated summarizing a scientific study of home field/court advantage in sports. Here's a link to a synopsis:
https://sports-law.blogspot.com/2011/01/home-field-advantage-and-umpire-analogy.html
The study debunks several 'myths' regarding the source of home field advantage, such as greater familiarity, road weariness, crowd energy, and finds that the #1 source of home field advantage is . . . official/referee/umpire bias, in turn influenced by things such as size of home crowd, proximity of home crowd, and other things. Although this might be hard to believe on the heels of the San Antonio game.
Refs are human beings, they are subject to fear, bias, pettiness, all the range of human emotions, foibles, etc. Although I think claims of ref/NBA conspiracies against teams like the Jazz are irrational pablum, I do think it's pretty clear that refs can and often do influence outcomes, unintentionally and, at times, intentionally. I also find claims of 'star treatment' in the NBA to be entirely plausible. To think refs are wholly objective enforcers of rules seems to me to naively ignore thousands of years of inbred human nature.
https://sports-law.blogspot.com/2011/01/home-field-advantage-and-umpire-analogy.html
The study debunks several 'myths' regarding the source of home field advantage, such as greater familiarity, road weariness, crowd energy, and finds that the #1 source of home field advantage is . . . official/referee/umpire bias, in turn influenced by things such as size of home crowd, proximity of home crowd, and other things. Although this might be hard to believe on the heels of the San Antonio game.
Refs are human beings, they are subject to fear, bias, pettiness, all the range of human emotions, foibles, etc. Although I think claims of ref/NBA conspiracies against teams like the Jazz are irrational pablum, I do think it's pretty clear that refs can and often do influence outcomes, unintentionally and, at times, intentionally. I also find claims of 'star treatment' in the NBA to be entirely plausible. To think refs are wholly objective enforcers of rules seems to me to naively ignore thousands of years of inbred human nature.
