The SEC Forum at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Need a good deal on some dentures... 

..we just got our teeth kicked in 

Tenn 34
LSU  20

Well, I got the winner right.  Le sigh. 

UGA 35
AU  10

Close

Bama 41
A&M  10

Not close

Clanga 35
Piggies 24

About a touchdown wrong on both sides 

Not bad, but I shouldn't quit my day job to be a gambler 

Auburn @ Ole Miss --- Be fun to pick an upset, but no, 38-13 OM

Alabama @ Tenn --- GotW for sure, and then some, still hard to pick against the Gumps, 41-31 Bama

Vandy @ UGA --- Should be a blow out, but ... Dawgs 48-13

LSU @ Florida --- I picked LSU in an upset last week, nope, Gaters 27-17

MSU @ Kentucky --- Don't know if Levis is playing, UK 27-24

Arky @ BYU --- Mormons 27-17.

I think that should be "fewer miles" ...

I like having handy excuses for losses ....

refs do suck. they get crap wrong all the time. some favor our teams, some don't.

like that safety-no-targeting-no-incomplete-pass-ok-play-just-didn't-happen call vs texas. i'm still confused on that one.

or the double facemask on the wr/db that only went against the db in the bama atm game.

some go for you, some against. and most just don't make any sense.

reminds me of the baseball balk rule.

Balk Rules
1) You can’t just be up there and just doin’ a balk like that.
1a. A balk is when you
1b. Okay well listen. A balk is when you balk the
1c. Let me start over
1c-a. The pitcher is not allowed to do a motion to the, uh, batter, that prohibits the batter from doing, you know, just trying to hit the ball. You can’t do that.
1c-b. Once the pitcher is in the stretch, he can’t be over here and say to the runner, like, “I’m gonna get ya! I’m gonna tag you out! You better watch your butt!” and then just be like he didn’t even do that.
1c-b(1). Like, if you’re about to pitch and then don’t pitch, you have to still pitch. You cannot not pitch. Does that make any sense?
1c-b(2). You gotta be, throwing motion of the ball, and then, until you just throw it.
1c-b(2)-a. Okay, well, you can have the ball up here, like this, but then there’s the balk you gotta think about.
1c-b(2)-b. Fairuza Balk hasn’t been in any movies in forever. I hope she wasn’t typecast as that racist lady in American History X.
1c-b(2)-b(i). Oh wait, she was in The Waterboy too! That would be even worse.
1c-b(2)-b(ii). “get in mah bellah” — Adam Water, “The Waterboy.” Haha, classic…
1c-b(3). Okay seriously though. A balk is when the pitcher makes a movement that, as determined by, when you do a move involving the baseball and field of
2) Do not do a balk please.

Being the most penalized team at something doesn't say anything about the referees missing calls.  It's logically consistent to say that Alabama gets away with a lot of holds AND that they're the most penalized team for holding.  

That said....

I have a suspicion that it mostly all evens out.  Me and another guy took a look at this (and Bama specifically) back a few years ago, and while results aren't iron-clad due to what I mentioned above, I would expect to see a different distribution than what we came up with if Alabama were getting more favorable calls.  They "averaged out," so to speak.  

Maybe because Alabama is good every year and you need everything to go your way to beat them most of the time it sticks out in people's memory more when something doesn't go your team's way.  Timing is another thing.  For example, as an LSU fan it's easy to be sore about a couple of calls (1 call and 1 non-call) that happened in the LSU/Bama game in 2014.  iirc, there wasn't much to complain about that game, or at least it evened out.  It's just that the two calls came at such a bad time, right at the end when it seemed likely LSU would seal the game, the calls seemed almost certainly to affect the outcome, and therefore it tends to be remembered as more than it was.  

I think there is something to referee bias, not in the sense that they're intentionally favoring teams, but in the sense that almost every human has, which is perceiving something which may or may not be the case.  Take these two examples:  In Alabama's case, they're thought of as having elite O-linemen with great technique.  That's for a reason...Alabama has recruited and developed a ton of outstanding OLs the last decade+.  It wouldn't shock me at all to find that refs "see" less penalties because they expect to.  Or consider LSU during the string of ridiculous defensive backs they had for years.  IMO, LSU got away with more PI than the average team.  Could it be the refs "missed" those calls because they expect lsu dbs to be great?  Wouldn't surprise me.  The non-calls didn't tend to be egregious, but they let tiger dbs get away with more contact than the average team.  In my opinion.  I would've been irked at some of the calls we didn't get, were I a fan of the opposing team.