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Originally Posted by DeadMoneyWalking
What if the official's hometown is the same as the home field? This would never be allowed right? Or would it cancel out to neutral
Probably not. It's more the affect that people hate to go against crowds or do things that would make them stand out. They do experiments where they show some color on the screen real fast (forget the exact one, something similar). They have a room full of people who are in on it and one real person they are testing. They have almost everyone give the wrong answer on purpose. The test subject will almost always just agree with what everyone else said in the study. If they let them go first, they a lot of times choose correctly, then they let them change their mind, and they'll second guess themselves.
Same idea with the crowd in games. You want to go along with the crowd. A lot of times the biases happen by giving the benefit of the doubt to the away team on insignificant calls rather than the big ones. For example, in baseball, the home team's strike zone shrinks a ton on a 3-2 count, but the away team's strike zone grows. But in non-important counts, the strike zone is about the same. Home field advantage also shrunk a ton once replay was introduced since there are less important calls in football to make with bias. I think fumble recoveries went by a huge margin to the home team before replay, and after it's 50-50.
Some of the smaller schools that don't have good fan support will get less of this, and if the visiting fans bring a ton of people, I'd imagine it could even go the other way (you'll get to experience that at your first Northwestern home game).
The theory that the better perceived team gets the breaks isn't covered, but it's a similar effect. If you have a preconceived notion that one team is better, you'll tend to give them the benefit of the doubt since you don't want to be the person who stands out against them. Hometown really wouldn't be a factor as directly, although it's possible that the pressure of returning home after the game might be an issue.