The Refs really do suck

After watching the world's worst PI call, I decided to see if opposing conference officials were biasing towards their conference's teams.  To do this, I pulled 2008 NCAA Penalty stats from the NCAA Stats website.  I broke penalties down by the conference affiliation of the officials:

Proof that Boo-boo is Getting Screwed by the Refs

Comments:

1. When the refs are from other BCS conferences (Big 10 teams hosting other BCS teams/Notre Dame), the Big 10 is penalized 8% more often for 20% more yards than when Big 10 officials are refereeing the game (Big 10 away at BCS or Big 10 Conference games).  Seems a little excessive to me...
2. When the reds are from non-BCS conferences, the penalties are on parity with Big 10 refereed games.  This is a little surprising, since there should be a huge (pro Big 10) talent disparity that would reduce their (the Big 10 team's) penalties.  The fact that this doesn't exist suggests that the refs are leaning on the scales of justics (so to speak).

In case you were wondering, here is a breakdown by conference.  While the Big Sky is the most aggregious, this number is suspect due to a small sample size (2 games).  The most statistically significant outlier is the Sun Belt, with 6 games (vs 97 Big 10 Ref'd games), showing a 33% increase in penalty yards against the Big 10...

Revenge of the Bible (Sun) Belt: