Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

by L. Jon Wertheim

  The closest thing to a fair comparison between stars and nonstars we’ve found is what happens when two players go after a loose ball. A loose ball is a ball that is in play but is not in the possession of either team (think of a ball rolling along the floor or one high in the air). Typically, there is a mad scramble between two (or more) opposing players that often results in the referee calling a foul. We examined all loose ball situations involving a star and a nonstar player and analyzed how likely it is that a foul will be called on either one.* A nonstar player will be assessed a loose ball foul about 57.4 percent of the time, a star player only 42.6 percent of the time. If the star player is in foul trouble—three or more fouls in the first half, four or more fouls in the second half—the likelihood that he will be assessed a loose ball foul drops further, to 26.9 percent versus 73.1 percent for the nonstar. But what if the nonstar player is in foul trouble but the star isn’t? It evens out, tilting slightly against the star player, who receives a foul 50.5 percent of the time, whereas his foul-ridden counterpart receives a foul 49.5 percent of the time. These results are consistent with the omission bias and the officials’ reluctance to affect the outcome. Fouling out a player has a big impact on the game, and fouling out a star has an even bigger impact. Much like the called balls and strikes in MLB for star players, it is omission bias, not star favoritism, that drives this trend. Star players aren’t necessarily being given better calls, just calls that keep them in the game longer.

  MAKE-UP CALLS

  Another long-standing fan accusation against referees is the use of the make-up call. When an obviously bad call is made, the thinking goes, the officials soon compensate by making an equally bad call that favors the other team. Or, in the next ambiguous situation, the refs will side with the team that was wronged previously. A few years ago there was a commercial for Subway that featured a football ref standing at midfield and saying: “I totally blew that call. In fact, it wasn’t even close. But don’t worry. I’ll penalize the other team—for no good reason—in the second half. To even things up.”

  The stats do seem to confirm the reality of make-up calls, but again, this stems from officials not wanting to inject themselves into the game. If you know you’ve made a bad call that influenced the game, you may be inclined to make a bad call in the other direction to balance it out. The hope is that “two wrongs make it right,” but of course this means referees are consciously not always calling things by the rule book.

  In baseball, we can look at make-up calls by the home plate umpire. If the umpire misses a strike call, how likely is it that the next pitch will be called a strike? It turns out that if the previous pitch was a strike but the umpire missed it and erroneously called a ball, the next pitch is much more likely to be called a strike even if it is out of the strike zone. If the previous pitch should have been called a ball but was mistakenly called a strike, the umpire is much more likely to call a ball on the next pitch even if the ball is in the strike zone. When umpires miss a called strike, they tend to expand their strike zone on the next pitch, and when they miss a called ball, they tend to shrink the strike zone on the next pitch.

  The following graph shows the difference between the strike zones for pitches immediately following errant strike calls and errant ball calls. After an errant ball call, the strike zone magically grows by 70 square inches. This pattern holds even for the first two pitches of the at-bat.

  ACTUAL STRIKE ZONE AFTER ERRANT STRIKE AND BALL CALLS

  Also, the more obvious the mistake, the more umpires try to make up for it on the next pitch. If the pitch was dead center down the plate and the ump failed to call a strike, he or she really expands the strike zone on the next throw. If the ball is way outside and the ump doesn’t call a ball, he or she really tightens the strike zone the next time. Again, this is consistent with trying not to affect the game. Umpires are trying to balance out any mistakes they make, and the more obvious those mistakes are, the more they try to balance things out.

  It’s not just in MLB and the NBA that officials try to avoid determining the outcome. It also occurs in the NFL, the NHL, and soccer. The omission bias suggests that the rate of officials’ calls will decrease as the game nears its conclusion and the score gets closer.

  In the NBA there is some evidence that fouls are called less frequently near the end of tight games, especially in overtime. (That includes the intentional foul fest that usually attends close games.) However, by looking deeper into the types of fouls called, or not called, late in the game, we get a more striking picture. Fouls more at the discretion of the referee—such as offensive fouls, which any NBA ref will tell you are the hardest to call—are the least likely to be called when the game is on the line. For some perspective, on a per-minute basis, an offensive foul is 40 percent less likely to be called in overtime than during any other part of the game. Certain “judgment call” turnovers, too, disappear when the game is tight. Double dribbling, palming, and every NBA fan’s favorite gripe, traveling, are all called half as often near the end of tight games and overtime as they are in earlier parts of the game. Remember the credo: When the game steps up, the refs step down.

  But is this omission bias, or is it just that players are committing fewer fouls, turnovers, and mistakes when the game gets tight, and so referees have fewer calls to make? If we look at calls for which officials don’t have much discretion, such as lost balls out of bounds (they have to call something), kicked balls, and shot clock violations, they occur at the same rate in the fourth quarter and overtime as they do throughout the game. In other words, players seem to be playing no more conservatively when the game is close and near the end.

  One of our favorite examples of ref omission bias occurred in the championship game of the 1993 NCAA tournament, when Michigan’s renowned Fab Five team played North Carolina. With 18 seconds to play and North Carolina leading by two points, Michigan star Chris Webber grabbed a defensive rebound and took three loping steps without dribbling. It was the kind of flagrant traveling violation that would have been cited in a church league game, but a referee standing just a few feet from Webber … did nothing. It was a classic case of swallowing the whistle. A traveling call would have doused the drama in the game. By overlooking Webber’s transgression and declining to make a subjective call, the ref enabled the game to build to a dramatic climax. The no-call enraged Dean Smith, Carolina’s venerable coach, who stormed down the court in protest. Billy Packer, the CBS commentator, was also apoplectic. “Oh, he walked!” Packer screamed. “[Webber] walked and the referee missed it!”

  You might recall what happened next. Webber dribbled the length of the court. Then, inexplicably, he stopped dribbling and called time-out. Alas, Michigan had no time-outs left. Unlike a traveling violation, when a player motions for a time-out and his team has exhausted its ration, well, that’s not a judgment call. That’s a call an official has to make even in the waning seconds of an exhilarating championship game. And the officials did: technical foul. North Carolina wins.

  In the NFL, more subjective calls (holding, illegal blocks, illegal contact, and unnecessary roughness) fall precipitously as the game nears the end and the score is close. But more objective calls (delay of game or illegal formation, motion, and shifts) are called at the same rate regardless of what the clock or scoreboard shows. The same is true in the NHL. More subjective calls (boarding, cross-checking, holding, hooking, interference) are called far less frequently at the end of tight games, but objective calls (delay of game, too many men on the ice) occur with similar frequency regardless of the game situation. We also find that in the NHL penalty minutes per penalty are lower late in the game. Referees have discretion over whether to call a major or a minor penalty—which dictates the number of minutes a player has to remain in the penalty box—and they are more reluctant to dispense more penalty minutes at the end of a tight game.

  A European colleague snickered to us, “You wouldn’t see this in soccer.” But we did. We looked at 15 years of
matches in the English Premier, the Spanish La Liga, and the Italian Serie A leagues. European officials are no better at overcoming omission bias than their American counterparts. Fouls, offsides, and free kicks diminish significantly as close matches draw to a close.

  But refs aren’t entirely to blame. As fans, we’ve come to expect a certain degree of omission bias, so much so that even the right call can be what the rules would suggest is the wrong call. Walt Coleman is the sixth-generation owner of Arkansas’s Coleman Dairy, the largest dairy west of the Mississippi River. He is also an NFL official. (We told you these guys were exceptional.) Late in a 2002 playoff game between the Patriots and the Raiders, New England quarterback Tom Brady was sacked and appeared to fumble. After reviewing the play, Coleman, as referee, overturned the call and declared the pass incomplete, invoking the obscure “tuck rule” (NFL Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2, Note 2), which states:

  When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. Also, if the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble.

  The Patriots retained possession, scored a field goal on the final play of regulation, and won in overtime. Technically, Coleman appears to have made the correct call, but to many fans it didn’t feel right to have an official insinuating himself into the game and going deep into an obscure part of the rule book at such a critical time. A decade later, the “tuck rule game” persists as one of the most controversial moments in NFL history. The “Tyree Catch,” on the other hand, is hardly famous for its controversy. And the NFL’s reaction was telling, too. The league did not offer Coleman up for a media tour the way they did Mike Carey.

  For an even more vivid illustration of how fans and athletes expect officials to remove themselves during the key moments of sports contests, consider what happened at the 2009 U.S. Open tennis tournament. In the women’s semifinal, Serena Williams, the 2008 defending champion, faced Kim Clijsters, a former top-ranked player from Belgium who’d retired from tennis to get married and start a family but had recently returned to make a spirited comeback. Although the draw sheet indicated that this was a semifinal match, the fans knew that it was the de facto final, pitting the two best players left in the tournament against each other. That Clijsters had beaten Serena’s sister, Venus, a few rounds earlier infused the match with an additional layer of drama.

  This was the rare sporting event that lived up to the considerable buildup. Points were hard fought. Momentum swung back and forth. As powerful as she was accurate, Clijsters won the first set 6–4. At 5–6 in the second set, Williams was serving to stay in the match. It was, as the cliché-prone might say, “crunch time.” Clijsters won the first point. Williams won the next. Then Clijsters won a point to go up 15–30.

  Two points from defeat, Williams rocked back and belted a first serve that landed a foot or so wide of the service box. The nervous crowd sighed. Williams bounced the ball in frustration and prepared to serve. After she struck her second serve but before the ball landed, the voice of a compactly built Japanese lineswoman, Shino Tsurubuchi, pierced the air: “Foot fault!”

  Come again? A foot fault is a fairly obscure tennis rule dictating that no part of the server’s foot touch—or trespass—the baseline before the ball is struck. (Imagine a basketball player stepping on the baseline while inbounding the ball.) Players can go weeks or even months without being cited for a foot fault violation. In this case, the violation was hardly blatant, but replays would confirm that it was legitimately a foot fault.

  Williams lost the point as a result. The score was now 15–40, with Clijsters only a point from winning the game—and the match. As the crowd groaned, Williams paused to collect herself. Or so it seemed. Instead, she stalked over to Tsurubuchi, who was seated to the side of the court in, ironically, a director’s chair. Then, in a ten-second monologue, Serena splintered whatever remained of tennis’s facade as a prissy, genteel country club pursuit. Glowering and raising her racket with one hand and pointing a finger with the other, Serena barked: “You better be f—ing right! You don’t f—ing know me! … If I could, I would take this f—ing ball and shove it down your f—ing throat!”

  Having already been assessed a penalty for smashing her racket earlier in the match, Williams was docked a point. Since the foot fault had made the score 15–40, with the docked point the game and match were over. Bedlam ensued. Confused fans, shocked by the sudden end to the match, jeered and booed. Williams marched to the net, where officials were summiting, and protested. Slamming her racket, she walked over to Clijsters’s side of the net, shook hands with her opponent, and then left the court. The blogosphere exploded. The “terrible tennis tirade” became a lead segment on CNN and front-page news internationally, the defining moment of the entire tournament.

  Part of what made the episode so memorable was the kind of outrageous tirade one associates less with tennis than with, say, cage fighting. But it was also jarring to see an official essentially decide what had been a close, hard-fought contest between two worthy competitors. And in many corners, fans’ outrage was directed at the official. How could the match be decided this way? We’ve come to expect omission bias in close contests. Swallow the whistle!

  But wait, you say; the official didn’t determine the outcome. Serena Williams did by her tirade, violating the rules. The lineswoman was simply doing her job. And if she had turned a blind eye to the violation, wouldn’t she have been robbing Clijsters? Try telling that to John McEnroe. Commentating from the CBS broadcast booth that night, he remarked immediately: “You can’t call that there! Not at that point in the match.” One former NBA ref had the same reaction as he watched from his home. “Great feel for the match,” he sarcastically texted a friend. Bruce Jenkins, a fine columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, wrote, “[Tsurubuchi] managed to ruin the tournament … any sports fan knows you don’t call a ticky-tack violation when everything is on the line.”

  A few weeks after Serena’s Vesuvian eruption, Sports Illustrated readers voted her Female Athlete of the Decade, suggesting that the episode had done little to hurt her image. Tsurubuchi was less fortunate. She was hurriedly escorted from the stadium and flown back to Japan the next day. When we first attempted to interview her, we were told she was off-limits to the media. In fact, tennis officials wouldn’t even disclose her name or confirm it when we learned it from other sources. (Compare this to the treatment Mike Carey received from the NFL after Super Bowl XLII.) Never mind that she made the correct call and didn’t give in to omission bias. In effect, she was shamed for being right.

  A full five months later, we finally caught up with Tsurubuchi at a small men’s tennis event in Delray Beach, Florida, where she was working in anonymity. She cut a dignified, reserved figure, disappointed to have been recognized but too polite to decline a request to talk. Conversing with this reticent, petite woman—she looks to be about four foot eight—it was hard not to think of what calamity might have ensued if Serena Williams actually had acted on her threat that night. Her voice quivering as if on a vibrate setting as she recalled the incident that brought her unwanted fame, Tsurubuchi claimed that she’d had no choice. “I wish—I pray—for players: ‘Please don’t touch that line!’ ” she explained in halting English. “But if players [do], we have to make the call.”

  Would she make the same call again? “Yes,” she said, looking dumbfounded. “It’s tough and the players might not be happy … but the rules are the rules, no matter what.”

  Her call—her resistance to the omission bias to which we’ve become accustomed in sports and in life—may have earned her widespread ridicule and disapproval, but she also won fans that night, including Mike Carey: “Making the hard call or the unpopular call, that’s where guts are tested, that’s the mark of a true official,” he says. “You might have a longer career as an off
icial if you back off. But you won’t have a more accurate career.”

  * It bears mention that Dungy made these remarks on an NBC broadcast while talking to his colleague Rodney Harrison, the defensive back who was covering Tyree on the play.

  * Ironically, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban earned one of his first (of many) fines when he disputed a late-game goaltending call that Benson refrained from making.

  * Notice that in both situations umpires tend to call high pitches strikes more often and call low pitches strikes far less often than the rules state that they should. This confirms what many baseball insiders have thought for years: MLB umpires have a high strike zone.

  * We define a “star” as any player in the top ten for receiving votes for MVP in any year, covering about 20 players. Star players for the years we examined were: Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Allen Iverson, Shaquille O’Neal, Jason Kidd, Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Vince Carter, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Yao Ming, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwight Howard, Elton Brand, Tracy McGrady, Chris Paul, Amar’e Stoudemire, Kevin Durant, and Paul Pierce.