Different factors affect the results of a basketball game: skill, talent, opposition, fans, and officiating. Officials make split second decisions, especially as related personal fouls, one of the most common calls made by officials. Oftentimes personal foul calls are a direct reflection of a team’s perceived aggressiveness. Officials are tasked with the extremely difficult chore of calling an unbiased game during one of the most difficult sports to officiate. Despite training and years of experience several social and psychological influences may affect an officials’ ability to call an unbiased game. The proximity to loud, berating, and opinionated fans may impede an official’s judgment. A factor shown to impede judgment in football, hockey and tae kwon do is team uniform color. Dark colors worn by visiting teams, tend to denote aggressiveness. Few if any studies have examined the relationship between uniform color and fouls in basketball. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between uniform color and number of referee foul calls in one season’s men’s and women’s basketball games.
Method:
Personal fouls, team uniform color, and win/loss data were collected from 16 men’s and 13 women’s basketball games over one season for one Division I university. Data was collected on flagrant, intentional, and technical fouls. To examine the thought by some that men are more aggressive than women, data was collected on both men and women’s basketball teams.
Analysis/Results:
Pearson correlations were run with alpha p<.05. No significant relationship was found between team uniform color and the number of referee personal foul calls in men’s intercollegiate basketball games r = .20, p= .27. Men’s teams wearing dark colors averaged 1.44 more fouls per game compared to athletes wearing light colors. No significant relationship was found between team uniform color and personal foul calls in women’s intercollegiate basketball games r = .30, p= .14. Women wearing dark colors averaged 2.08 more fouls per game than teams wearing light colors.
Conclusions:
While no significant relationship was found for either men or women relative to team jersey color, women were called for a slightly higher number of fouls per game compared to males. Although the sample size is low and relative to one university’s games, the perception exists that uniform color affects officials’ calls. Studies examining fouls and colors across a number of schools and conferences may provide a broader perspective about uniform color and officials’ split second decisions.