by numatu » Mon Dec 31, 2007 11:58 pm
As a general rule, I've found that people dead set against a certain team and who are seething to see them lose, will more often then not use referee bias as the reason to why they won a particular game. Rarely will there be actual evidence of course, but they're so clouded with some weird hatred of a team playing a game, they'll never recognize it.
Alternatively, fans that are just as knowledgeable about the game but have no bias one way or the other will watch the same game and see nothing peculiar. In the case of the Giants/Pats for instance, 4 penalties for NE and 5 for NYG will not seem out of the ordinary.