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Beaver Fans and Refs

41

Extending the train of thought from the prior thread, is it possible all the anti-Beaver bias we see from the refs is simply:

1. They (subconsciously) know Beaver fans are used to losing and will complain a little but ultimately take it in stride/par for the course.

2. The Corvallis media will never call out the refs, so they can get away with it easier than say…LA, Seattle, etc. Therefore, they (subconsciously) give any questionable call to the louder media outlet.

3. There is no bias. We just notice it more with the Beavs since we follow them.

#2 would be easy to test out. Maybe when you’re watching some non-OSU games see if the refs are giving the larger media market team the calls.

It does seem to me we get worse calls than other teams, but #3 might be kicking in since I don’t watch the rest of the league very often. For those of you who watch the entire league, see if the more vocal/aggressive media market gets the calls.

41 COMMENTS

  1. I have no doubt about the truth of this. As I said in the previous thread, the consistently bad refereeing OSU is subject to is external validation of the low self esteem argument you made.

  2. Rueck thinks there is a problem or he wouldn’t have complained about Gulich . Tinkle has mentioned sending complaints to Pac-12.What is that process? Is there competition for being a Pac-12 official? Just have to take what’s available? Pay scale? Washington fans commented that Stevie Thompson traveled b4 shooting the game-winning shot. Determine fairness by equal # of bad calls? More replay? I couldn’t begin to sort that out..

  3. One would have to do a thorough.anslysis of several games to see if the bad calls go against OSU.

    Does the superior team or home team get the calls?

    The problem as I see it is that the coaches, aside from a recent comment from Reuck, do not call the league or refs to task. In the obvious CWS bias, so blatant that even the media was surprised, who stood up for OSU? Was there anything behind the scenes? Com Scott didn’t say anything. The AD didn’t say anything. Pres Ray didn’t say anything. That’s what I have a beef about.

    • Pat Casey has to take some blame for the CWS, he didn’t challenge the ball in the corner and frankly probably should have gotten himself thrown out of the game over the strike zone.

      • Nope, Casey deserves little fault for that. He had an obscured view of where the ball hit and ultimately trusted his third base coach to make a judgment. The third base coach should have indicated that a review is needed to Casey.

        However, the overwhelming majority of the fault belongs to the umpire crew. If the ball is that close, it should be automatically reviewed by the umpires, PARTICULARLY IN THE GODDAMN SEMIFINALS.

  4. OT – OSU WBB has UCLA, USC, Az, ASU left.

    UCLA is at home this Friday. UCLA had a 35-point victory over OSU earlier, split with Stanford, and lost to UO, whom they face Monday the 19th.

    Will the Reser crowd turn out or be off on the three day weekend? I’d think OSU chances were better if UCLA had a Sunday mid-day game against UO as opposed to Monday, 7pm. I think that schedule reduces the chances of UCLA looking ahead.

    • Oh come one, thats not true. Beaver fans are unique in their loser qualities.

      Note: Blaming the refs is the ultimate in loser mentality. Sometimes its accurate (last year in the CWS for instance) but 99% of the time is something the team should/can overcome.

      • Agree it’s a loser mentality. I’ve never bought into it. I’ve always told the kids I’ve coached, one call never determines the outcome of the game.

        Sets their minds to come back and play hard and not worry about the officials. Too bad that doesn’t work on the parents in the stands.

        • I used to coach the same thing. Trouble is, in close games, you need three teams doing their best and often the refs are bad. They do swing close games.

  5. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT –

    Feb 24th at 3pm. Scott Barnes is rolling out the 5 year strategic plan in the Toyota Club at Reser.

    https://static.osubeavers.com/custompages/strategicplan/index.html?src=osubeavers

    I challenge all of you to go and ask him the hard questions. Don’t complain about not being able to communicate with Barnes if you don’t go to this meeting or expect others to ask the questions you want answered. It’s good timing giving the current discussions here.

    • Angry I HIGHLY suggest you start a thread dedicated just to questions to ask. We can vote on these and say, top ten get asked?

      If we start asking dumb questions he’ll get impatient and walk off stage. This is the time to ask quality questions.

    • Might be worth a quick compare to Pitt’s strategic plan under Barnes. Was this a unique effort, or did Barne’s just cut-n-paste? Sure, University Athletic Departments are going to have similar challenges and some similar solutions, but I’m thinking this looks pretty similar to his last piece of work.

    • It’s pretty boilerplate stuff.
      http://osubeavers.com/documents/2018/2/12/StrategicPlan_Final.pdf

      1 is just redundant with the university itself. What’s good for one student is good for all students.

      2.2-3 gives some hard numbers that might or might not be decent. First glance says they’re decent to great, depending on which we’re looking at.

      I feel like 3 is completely boilerplate and might eschew other strategic needs in order to manage their own first, creating unnecessary difficulties. But it’s premature to ascribe the mean to boilerplate rhetoric.

      4.3 got an audible chuckle out of me.

      5 is meh.

      6.1, 2 and 5 are just plans to make plans. 6.3 is technically the same, but this is the time to begin looking at it in a truly comprehensive way, maybe sprinkling some 3.2 on this instead of the language there that says they’re going to squeeze some more blood from turnips. But it is interesting that Nyborg is one of the co-chairs for 6.

      • The title is predictably weak. “Build the Dam.” and the BEAVS acronym probably took most of their creative effort: Build Excellent Authentic Visionary Student-athletes.

        Just reviewing it quickly, I’d probably have defined the vision for OSU athletics up front, then organized the plan around:

        The student-athlete;
        The fans/alumni;
        The University.

        Say what you’re going to do for the student-athlete first, the fans second, and put the more procedural things under the University section.

        I don’t see a lot of vision in it. For example, regarding finishing Reser, from an aesthetic standpoint sure, but how do they justify it and where is NCAA football going in 25 years? I still wonder if they shouldn’t be thinking about the growth of soccer for example, and should they be responsive to that? Is there a chance for Reser to play a role in soccer for the long term for OSU and the PAC? Does it make it more justifiable and does it help the growth and stability of the AD in the long term? I don’t know, maybe not.

        Also, where is the fanbase going. How about some demographics? What do those demographics indicate about viewing and attendance?

        Marcdog has some interesting ideas about improving the student-athlete experience. I know many here would have good ideas, I wish they’d sought input – including deliberately and explicitly here – before they finalized and dropped the plan. As Jack said, it looks pretty boilerplate.

  6. I suspect it’s #3 because I don’t trust my objectivity. Having said that, I will note that I have on occasion said to myself, “we got away with one there.” I think those are far fewer in number that the “no way in hell that was a foul” variety.

  7. It’s #3. College referees are terrible in every sport for every team. Every year I watch the NCAA tournament and I find myself bitching about the reffing in just about every game. Put incompetent guys on national TV and it’s a disaster

    • I was going to say #4 is that there are too many poor refs in the league. The good (or better/more consistent) manage games that are more visible nationally. Get nationally ranked, and you get a better class of refs.

      The conference needs to step up and hire dedicated crews who call consistently on a daily basis. We’ve been jobbed simply because some refs are so bad. And they do these games back to back to back over three or four days, sometimes many thousands of miles apart.

      Put bad employees in a position to fail, and you will succeed at making them fail. That’s a success… right?

      Part of the problem is that these bad refs get in ruts and call certain phases of the game instead of the game as a whole. They’ll let teams get chippy in the start one week, then clamp down too much the next. That can appear as bias to some fans because the very manner in which a game is called can benefit one team over another.

      But in the end, you can only continue to be the aggressor and play with effort always. All refs, good and bad, call games slightly in favor of the aggressor because they are seen as the ones under control, not chasing the game. Play that game, and you minimize poor officiating.

      • I think that is excellent advice. Act like the team that should get the calls. You have to play the refs you get. The coach is part of that — he should play on the psychology of the refs….play them as best he can. I bet the most successful coaches know well how to do that.

  8. If Jack gives the #4 option, I’ll give the #5 & #6 options:

    #5 Refs know that blue bloods have more talent and therefore call games to the teams who they know “should” win rather than as the game is actually being paid. This may be more sub-consciously but I think more plausible than #1 as an explanation for Beavs ref issues.

    #6 Some refs may be on the take and actually fixing games, although a particualrly poor ref/crew may get caught in the vortex of needing to find make-up calls for prior egregious calls and this could also be percieved as being on the take.

    • Your #5 sounds like ice-skating judging in the Olympics. It’s not a bad premise.

      It also sounds like “the Jordan rules”. I’ve actually heard this maintained as “proper” by various talking heads.

  9. Two years ago the Beav’s MBB would not have made the tournament except for two nice calls that went their way against UW and Utah. I think bias is a slippery slope, but in a given game it can sure seem like the calls are going against the Beavs. I personally think just in general P-12 football/baseball officiating in shitty compared to other P-5 conferences and it makes for messy games.

  10. I think you need to add an item. Namely, refs concern over what the media will say. Lower tier teams getting a bad call affect things less than a top team getting a bad call. An undefeated team losing re a a bad call will get national attention. A loser team, who cares.

    I am willing to bet that all things being equal (like refs not being from, residing in, one team locality), a top team gets calls a bottom dweller would not. And I think its because the media is watching and reporting.

    Another item is a question. The refs are humans, who are supposed to make calls with no bias. But they are almost certainly biased, just because they are human. We elected a president who pretty much promised to be a bigot. He rode in on the bigotry ticket. We are in general, biased. So most refs probably come into a given game, already biased. So why not expect bias? Is there ever a game where every ref is unbiased?

  11. Some research has been established to address the cognitive dissonance that refs go through when ruling against the home team. Can’t find the exact studies, but I do recall that it showed a significant correlation favoring the home teams which had more vocal crowds.
    This probably makes it a combination of your #1 & #2 points above.

    Here’s a basic overview of one such study:

    “The roar of the crowd may subconsciously influence some referees to give an advantage to the home team, according to a study that examines the results of over 5,000 soccer matches in the English Premier League. The matches were played between 1992 and 2006, and involved 50 different referees, each of whom had officiated at least 25 games within that time period.”

    and

    “In addition to affecting the number of goals scored, the away team received more penalties, implying that referees are making calls in favor of the home team, possibly as a result of the influence of the crowd. Some individual referees are more susceptible to these influences than others. In fact, more experienced referees are less biased by the impact of a large audience, which suggests that they may develop a resistance to effects of the crowd.”

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070403112044.htm

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