Are College Football Games Fixed?

by: Evan Altemus

When the average person loses a bet on a game a common response is that the game was fixed.  However, the average experienced bettor knows that almost every college and professional game isn’t intentionally influenced.  The Toledo football point shaving scandal of a few years ago and former NBA referee Tim Donaghy’s arrest and conviction of intentionally influencing games for gambling purposes are just two reasons why people wonder if some games are fixed.  Even further speculation is fueled with endings like the one in the San Diego/Pittsburgh NFL regular season game last year, where Troy Polamalu’s fumble return for a touchdown was falsely overturned.  That wrong call led to one of the most infamous endings to a football game, especially from a sports bettor’s perspective.

To properly answer my question posed in the title, the answer is no, almost every college football game is not fixed.  So what is the point of this article?  Several undefeated teams have a lot on the line over these next few weeks, and the conferences that they are in could also benefit greatly from one of their teams going undefeated.  Teams like Iowa, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State are all ranked high in the BCS, much higher than they are used to being at this point in the season.

Taking that into consideration, it was not surprising to see the horrible officiating in the Indiana/Iowa game on Saturday.  The Big 10 officials, both on the field and in the replay booth, made several clear and obvious calls favoring Iowa, even though there was concrete video evidence supporting the call that would favor Indiana.  Early in the game, Indiana coach Bill Lynch challenged a ruling on the field that his running back was short on a 3rd down run.  Video replay showed that he had obviously gained the first down, yet the replay official said the spot of the ball was correct.  Another questionable call was the helmet to helmet hit called on an Indiana defender as he tackled an Iowa player toward the sidelines.  It was obvious that the Indiana defender used his shoulder to make the hit.  However, the biggest blown call was when a Hoosier touchdown pass was called incomplete by the replay booth, even though the catch was ruled a touchdown on the field and no video replays showed that the player had dropped the pass.  Usually referees are notorious for saying that there was no overwhelming evidence that supported a change to the ruling on the field.  However, in that case the replay official supposedly saw some kind of concrete evidence to clearly overturn the call, even though both commentators assumed the call on the field would stand.

A few other games this past Saturday had questionable calls made which favored undefeated teams.  Cincinnati was not called for an ineligible receiver downfield on their fake field goal, which resulted in a touchdown pass.  It was fairly obvious that several members of the offensive line were well past the line of scrimmage, yet no call was made.  In addition, Texas seemed to benefit from some generous calls in their road game against Oklahoma State.

Overall, I do not think that referees are directly told by conference officials to make calls favoring one team, but I think it’s understood by them that a conference team getting to a big time BCS bowl and/or staying undefeated could directly or indirectly affect them in some way.  One way of influencing referees is if one team is known to be a passing offense, then conference officials could tell the officiating crew to pay particular attention to pass interference penalties in the game.  I’m sure the referees understand what a subtle hint like that means.  I believe that the officiating crews in a few of this past Saturday’s college football games, especially the Indiana/Iowa game, purposefully gave certain teams preferential treatment with their calls.

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