With good football officiating, the officials are invisible on the field of play. They only appear to enforce the rules and do not affect the integrity of the game or the normal flow of the contest.

Unfortunately, fans of the Pac-12 do KNOW the names of the conference’s officials and they are most definitely not INVISIBLE.   Fans should not KNOW their names.  As a long-time observer of Pac-12 football, my view has been that the conference’s officials insert themselves into the game and creatively interpret the rules in a way that not only affects the integrity of the game but changes the normal flow of the contest.

The statistics for fewest penalty yards per game differ significantly for the Pac-12 and SEC conferences (Table 1).  With 120 Division 1 FBS schools, one should expect that about half of the teams in a conference might be ranked above the 60^th rank and the other half below 60^th if the conference’s officiating resulted in an average number of penalty yards per game.  However, the mean national rank for penalty yards among Pac-12 schools is 94^th and for the SEC, the conference mean is 40^th.   Every Pac-12 school except for ASU is ranked below 60^th – the midpoint of the 120 schools, while 7 are currently among the 20 most penalized in the nation!

In the SEC, 10 of the 14 schools rank above the 60^th position and the mean of the SEC is 54 national ranking spots above the mean ranking of the Pac-12.  There is no reasonable explanation to account for the magnitude of this discrepancy in penalty yardage assessed among conferences other than officiating.  This very wide gap in penalties cannot be accounted for by differences in the style of play or by coaching differences in the two conferences, nor can the argument be made that the quality of officiating in the Pac-12 is superior and therefore results in more penalties called by the conference’s officials than their counterparts in the SEC.  This analysis focuses on the penalty yardage per game but very similar relationships are evident for the number of penalties assessed per game – the Pac-12 schools are assessed many more penalties per game than schools in the SEC.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott has been aggressive in his efforts to improve the image of the conference and to expand the conference’s appeal to a broader audience.  But for an unaffiliated fan or a potential new fan of football in the conference, excessive penalties and face time for the conference’s officials might adversely influence the quality of the Pac-12 football product.  This should be a matter of concern for commissioner Scott in his quest to market the Pac-12 to new audiences since fewer penalties could make his conference’s football contests a more watchable product.

Table 1.  National rankings for fewest penalty yards per game in the Pac-12 and SEC conferences.  (source: NCAA.com football statistics for November 11^th 2012).