[NU Sports] Q2: Columbus

[Michael Vance]

At 11/13/2005 12:29 PM, SjT \(Stephen J. Truog\) wrote:
> > You are right that technically, all plays are
> > reviewed.  But it is obvious
> > that is not the definition of "reviewed" that ABC
> > was using for their
> > statistic, so my point still stands.
>
>Except that by using a percentage, you are getting an
>equal representation of all the conferences. If it had
>said that 200 calls were overturned in the Big Ten and
>50 in the SEC, we'd have no idea what the pool was or
>whether that was a high or low percentage.
>
>But the stat said percentage -- so whether it's a
>large pool of reviewed plays or not, the fact remains
>that more calls in the Big Ten are overturned by
>replay than in the other BCS conferences (i.e. Big Ten
>refs get it wrong on the field more often so thank
>goodness we have replay:) ).

I agree that it's a percentage that matters.  But it's the percentage of 
total reviewable plays -- including those where the technical advisor 
remained silent and did not disrupt play -- that matters, not just the 
percentage of plays where the replay official called an official 
timeout.  The latter is the stat that ABC used.  See the math on my 
original response to this topic for an illustration of why this stat is flawed.

> > technical advisor remains silent.  But there is no
> > way that 40% of all
> > reviewable -- and thus technically, reviewed --
> > plays were overturned.
>
>No - just 40% of close calls that went to the booth.

With "went to the booth" really meaning "had an official timeout called so 
the technical advisor could look at it more closely."

>Where in other leagues, the percentage overturned was
>lower. That's all the stat said and that's all review
>does - look at close calls on the field, and in the
>Big Ten's case, those calls weren't correct in a
>higher percentage of instances.

I'm not trying to defend the Big Ten's refs.  I'm just trying to defend 
them against a statistic that does not tell the true, complete picture.

-Michael