Keeping the Game Close: "Fair Play" Among Men's College Basketball Referees

Abstract

As a cross-cultural universal, sports are frequently examined by anthropologists in terms of how sporting behavior embodies and expresses the cultural logic of societal norms and expectations. In contemporary Western society, sports are often premised on cultural precepts of “fair play” expressed through gaming rules that ostensibly control factors that allow for the expression and comparison of competing skills. We examine the behavior of men’s college basketball referees as choreographers of staged fair play and suspense versus objective enforcers of rules. To this end, we test the hypothesis that when games are televised o n national television, referees in men’s Division I college basketball call a disproportionate number of fouls against teams that are ahead in the score of their respective games, resulting in more competitive games which maintain an edge of suspense for viewers. We suspect this to be true even though trailing teams typically exhibit more aggressive play to remain competitive or get back in the game. We observed the behavior of referees involved in a total of 2,441 foul call events in 67 randomly selecte d Division I college basketball games during the 2000 basketball season. Results demonstrate that college basketball referees cal l a significantly higher number of fouls against a team that is leading a game when the game is televised on national television. This pattern does not hold when games are televised regionally. We suspect that “fair play” behavior on the part of referees helps promote dramatic suspense to attract and maintain television viewers.