NFL Referees and Points Per Game

Let's take a look at points per game by referee in the 2007 NFL season so far. Do you think this statistic has any correlation to the rate that the home team wins? Do you think it matters which referee you have?

We can't yet answer the second question, but as far as the first one -- yes, there is a correlation between the total number of points per game and the rate the home team wins. In general, if you have a referee who usually has low scoring games, the referee will usually have home teams win more often.

There is an 0.425 correlation for that. (The correlation to the points scored by the visiting team is an obvious -0.716 because of course if thevisiting team scores less, the home team wins more often. For the points scored by the home team, the correlation is only a mild 0.206)

Here is the breakdown, with the following statistics: referee, total points per game, average visiting team points, and average home team points). This is through week 15 of the 2007 NFL season:

Steratore, Gene (48.2, 22.4, 25.8)
Green, Scott (45.6, 25.2, 20.4)
Morelli, Pete (44.9, 23.1, 21.8)
Austin, Gerald (44.7, 18.8, 25.9)
Nemmers, Larry (44.0, 16.7, 27.4)
Parry, John (43.8, 18.5, 25.3)
Winter, Ron (42.7, 21.2, 21.5)
Carey, Mike (42.2, 21.1, 21.1)
Hochuli, Ed (41.7, 17.5, 24.1)
Triplette, Jeff (40.6, 17.7, 22.8)
Carollo, Bill (40.4, 18.2, 22.2)
Coleman, Walt (40.2, 19.8, 20.5)
Corrente, Tony (40.0, 16.6, 23.5)
Anderson, Walt (39.7, 18.3, 21.5)
Leavy, Bill (36.4, 17.4, 19.0)
McAulay, Terry (35.1, 14.7, 20.4)
Boger, Jerome (34.7, 14.7, 20.0)