I hear ya. Worth mentioning considering the topic.
Do you count something that changes from year-to-year, such as “NBA team that includes the (or one of the) most marketable Next-Michael-Jordan (TM, National Basketball Association)”? (e.g. team that included at the appropriate point in time, Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, etc.). If so, then well, I guess I have a suggestion. I mean, the league has basically stopped even pretending that the Next-Michael-Jordan gets called the same way as an awkward-looking white rookie; the only question is how much that carries over to their respective teammates.
- What was the official’s name?
- Why did he only accept payoffs from underdogs?
I don’t participate in Notre Dame threads.
My assumption would be that he wasn’t getting payoffs directly from the teams, but was betting on the games himself. Doesn’t answer the question of why he always favored the underdog, though; seems like it would be less suspicious to mix it up between helping favorites and dogs.
Not to speak for Ranger_Jeff but the bribes would come from the gamblers who wanted to affect the betting. Since the underdog teams in question probably lost the game anyway they wouldn’t have interest in this kind of bribe.
The problem with this is that it’s pretty hard to subtly affect the outcome of an NFL game with split second timing. If you determine that you’re going to call or not call a penalty on a play to affect the scoring you either have to be blatant, lucky, or exceptionally good at cheating. And betters (who scour results looking for bias like this) would jump all over it if they suspected foul play.
I believe that Tom Brady fumbled. BRADY thought he’d fumbled too, and never even made a half-hearted attempt to tell the refs that it was an incomplete pass. But regardless, that was just a lucky break for the Pats, not part of a longstanding pattern of refs favoring the Pats.
Montreal Canadiens. Especially home games.
nm…
Except when they play in Seattle on Monday nights. They have lost their last 2 MNF games against the Seahawks on contested plays that favored the home team.
Quite so- and your post reminds me why I have to question my own perceptions. Even though I sincerely believe the Steelers get favorable treatment year in and year out… it’s entirely possible I’m extrapolating from a few incidents and positing a bias that doesn’t really exist.
Speaking as a Yankees fan, can I think of bad calls that benefitted the Yankees greatly? Of course! Baltimore fans will never forget the fan interference that MAY have cost them a shot at the World Series! And fans outside New York may well believe “The Yankees always get the breaks.” But I’ve seen too many blown calls that went AGAINST the Yanks to believe the umps are in the tank for the Bronx Bombers.
I have to imagine passionate Pittsburghr fans (out there, Airman?) remember numerous times the Steelers got screwed over, and laugh at the notion they get special treatment.
Some umps might still have been overly impressed with them and gave them more than the benefit of the doubt now and then.
There’s a story about the time a rookie pitcher was facing Rogers Hornsby and complained to umpire Bill Klem about a pitch he though was a strike.
"Klem looked the pitcher straight in the eye and responded, according to Baseball Almanac, “Son, when you pitch a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know.” 
Yeah - they really got some great calls their way when the opposing teams got to bring in their own conference officiating crews. :rolleyes:
Oh, I do laugh at it. If the Steelers get all the calls, why did Joe Nedney get to re-kick a shanked field goal in overtime in 2003 on a dubious running into the kicker penalty? Nedney “joked” that he was acting when he went down. The Titans went on to the AFC Championship Game. Seems to be a big call they didn’t get, isn’t it?
I seem to recall a 26-year drought between Super Bowl wins, one with several losing seasons under Noll at the end of his tenure and a whole bunch of playoff appearances under Cowher where they were supposedly the class of the AFC but always came up short. If the Steelers get all the calls, how does that happen?
You see what you want to see. I’ve seen almost every game since the Cowher era started and most of the late Noll era games and I can tell you with certainty that the Steelers don’t get all the calls.
Given that you accept your perceptions are inherently biased, why do you sincerely believe something that, an an intellectual level, is just incredibly unlikely to be true?
What can I tell you, except that I KNOW I can’t always be!leve what I think I see with my own eyes!
I imagine he would go with the dogs because it is not easy for calls to make a bad team score but they could certainly keep a good team from scoring past a spread.
Sorry, but no way. I won’t get into the debate over those Super Bowl calls because, right or wrong, they don’t prove favoritism. In the playoff game with the Colts that same year the refs overturned an obvious Steelers interception that very nearly cost them the game and the trip to the Super Bowl. It was such a terrible call the league issued a statement acknowledging the error: http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs05/new
The Steelers are victims and beneficiaries of bad calls the same as everyone else.
I think some players get the benefit of the doubt more often than others, but I don’t think there’s anything consistently for or against a particular team. (Although, in the 2006 NBA finals the Heat seemed to have a sixth guy on the floor with them wearing a gray shirt.)
I think Alabama gets the calls. I remember a few years back they played Arkansas and it seemed like Arkansas got penalized for being on the same field with Alabama.
Notre Dame is another one that seems to benefit from the refs.
In the NFL, I don’t know who gets them but it sure isn’t the Lions.
See, this is the sort of thing I mean.
If Montreal got unusually beneficial refereeing, it sure doesn’t show up in the results they get on the ice. There is no evidence at all Montreal gets more calls than other teams. You can look this up; go back year after year on ESPN’s expanded standings site and you can see how many power play opportunities every team gets versus their opponents. Montreal does not get more. Actually, I went back every year to the lockout and since then Montreal has been shorthanded a bit more than they’ve had the advantage, though the total is within random chance.
If that refereeing was especially prevalent in Montreal it would be very easy to demonstrate it to be the case; there would be statistical evidence that Montreal had a greater advantage in penalty calling at home than the NHL norm. They would also have more power plays than penalty kills overall, unless there was an equal bias against them in road games.