This made me curious to see if the data supports that hypothesis and whether there are other judgment call penalties that certain conferences don’t call or call at a higher frequency. Every penalty is technically a judgment call, some more than others. I’m not concerned with false starts, offsides, encroachment, or special teams-specific penalties. While I have seen Big Ten officials blatantly miss an Oregon opponent’s false start, these types of calls are well-defined and typically flagged appropriately. You won’t find fanbases arguing over whether something was or wasn’t.
I’d love to break down judgment call penalties by specific officiating crews, but the data I have available only lends itself to using regular-season conference games to define the crew. Since G6 crews don’t officiate in the playoffs, I chose to only examine P5/P4 conference games.
The Big Ten holding call narrative holds up over the past two seasons. Big Ten conference games see just over half the number of holding calls as both the SEC and ACC. In 2025, SEC conference games had 1.75 times the number of holding calls per play as the Big Ten.
Amongst the booing following the introduction of the SEC officiating crew for the playoff game against James Madison, I overheard clamoring that we should expect more holding and fewer pass interference calls. James Madison was completely overmatched by Oregon’s passing attack and, therefore, more likely to commit pass interference, but this notion of SEC officials not calling defensive pass interference isn’t supported by the data.
Oregon fans might be skewed in their view of Big Ten referees due to the number of DPI calls made in the USC contest. Big Ten officials have actually called defensive pass interference on a lower percentage of passing plays than all other P4 conferences this year. Offensive pass interference has been nonexistent over the last three years of Big Ten conference play, while the SEC calls OPI the most. Defensive holding has been called consistently at a higher rate by SEC officials over the last 3 years.
Big Ten officials have consistently called facemasks less frequently than other conferences since 2020. Pac-12 and Big 12 refs called ineligible receiver downfield more frequently in most years since 2020. I would guess that is correlated with offensive philosophies. 2022 and 2023 had numerous highly efficient passing attacks in the Pac-12, including a Bo Nix-led Oregon squad.
I combined a handful of penalties together to create a larger group. Unsportsmanlike conduct encompasses penalized behavior, including taunting and excessive celebration. The roughing category includes roughing the passer, unnecessary roughness, and late hits.
The SEC doesn’t call unsportsmanlike conduct, taunting, and excessive celebration nearly as often as other conferences in recent years. Personal fouls show up notably less in the play-by-play text for Big 12 games. I’ll note that this could be due to a difference in how various types of personal fouls are recorded. Roughing penalties have consistently climbed since 2020. I expect this is also due to how play-by-play is getting recorded. Please let me know if you have any other theories behind this increase.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully this can inform your expectations of how a playoff game may be called depending on which conference the officiating crew is from. Go Ducks!