What I wonder about is the the motivation of the officials to consistently call a certain number of fouls per game, on each team, and at what times and how that is never ever talked about even though the numbers show it. I haven't seen the data nor compiled any, but I would bet that I am right that you will see a pretty consistent pattern of foul calls. For instance, how many times when two teams approach the media break, like the under 7 timeout, and someone gets hit with a touch foul? Also, how many times have you seen a team rack up 30 or 40 fouls? Do you think that teams just automatically foul about the same number of times a game? This is when a team can score 40 points in a game or 100, commit 5 turnovers or 25, or shoot 5 threes or 35, and yet still commit between 15-20 fouls a game? Never over or under, or rarely.
So I want to know what kind of pressure are these officials under besides just calling it like it is. Do they know they have a 2 hour time slot and not to go over? Do they get buzzed in to say we need a commercial stoppage here so get somebody like Pemsl or Kriener? Or do they get told that, hey, you could call 50 fouls on MSU but the fans don't want to be here all night and the TV partners have to go to other programming so move it along and let it go?
An analogy is in short track racing, at the end of the night when it is getting late and everyone is getting tired and you start on the front row, you better take advantage of it and jump the start because no way are they going to call it back. It will take way too much time. At least for those of use with experience would, while those that complained were just naive.
