What About The Ref?

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I found this amazing story on a great blog called Extraordinary Observations that is interesting on so many levels and brings up things we should think about a lot more.

I'm gonna take a flier and say that this case of an NBA ref betting on his own games is a close to one in a million case. But by digging a little deeper some big issues come up, you see this guy won his bets over 70% of the time even though there is almost no evidence that he skewed his own play calling or favored any particular team.

What was his secret? He likely knows the normal game variables like player match ups pretty well and occasionally may have had inside dope on things like injuries; however, this wasn't the factor that usually determined his bets. Instead he keyed in on something that few people even think of by guessing who would win by knowing the personal preferences, moods and biases of the referees calling the games. It worked like crazy!

Now keep in mind that these are events seen by hundreds of thousands or millions of people, and taped and watched by expert broadcasters and observers. Even so there is more than enough slack in how a a game is called for referees to be affecting outcomes.

In the wider world that is still mostly not "on film", one can only guess the influence little known government agencies and bureaucracies have on the game of life.