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discretion, such as lost balls out of bounds (they have to call
something
), kicked balls, and shot clock violations, they occur at the same rate in the fourth quarter and overtime as they do throughout the game. In other words, players seem to be playing no more conservatively when the game is close and near the end.
    One of our favorite examples of ref omission bias occurred in the championship game of the 1993 NCAA tournament, when Michigan’s renowned Fab Five team played North Carolina. With18 seconds to play and North Carolina leading by two points, Michigan starChris Webber grabbed a defensive rebound and took three loping steps without dribbling. It was the kind of flagrant traveling violation that would have been cited in a church league game, but a referee standing just a few feet from Webber … did nothing. It was a classic case of swallowing the whistle. A traveling call would have doused the drama in the game. By overlooking Webber’s transgression and declining to make a subjective call, the ref enabled the game to build to a dramatic climax. The no-call enragedDean Smith, Carolina’s venerable coach, who stormed down the court in protest.Billy Packer, the CBS commentator, was also apoplectic. “Oh, he walked!” Packer screamed. “[Webber] walked and the referee missed it!”
    You might recall what happened next. Webber dribbled the length of the court. Then, inexplicably, he stopped dribbling and called time-out. Alas, Michigan had no time-outs left. Unlike a traveling violation, when a player motions for a time-out and his team has exhausted its ration, well, that’s not a judgment call. That’s a call an official
has
to make even in the waning seconds of an exhilarating championship game. And the officials did: technical foul. North Carolina wins.
    In the NFL, more subjective calls (holding, illegal blocks, illegal contact, and unnecessary roughness) fall precipitously as the game nears the end and the score is close. But more objective calls (delay of game or illegal formation, motion, and shifts) are called at the same rate regardless of what the clock or scoreboard shows. The same is true in the NHL. More subjective calls (boarding, cross-checking, holding, hooking, interference) are called far less frequently at the end of tight games, but objective calls (delay of game, too many men on the ice) occur with similar frequency regardless of the game situation. We also find that in the NHL penalty minutes per penalty are lower late in the game. Referees have discretion over whether to call a major or a minor penalty—which dictates the number of minutes a player has to remain in the penalty box—and they are more reluctant to dispense more penalty minutes at the end of a tight game.
    A European colleague snickered to us, “You wouldn’t see this insoccer.” But we did. We looked at 15 years of matches in the English Premier, the Spanish La Liga, and the Italian Serie A leagues. European officials are no better at overcoming omission bias than their American counterparts. Fouls, offsides, and free kicks diminish significantly as close matches draw to a close.

    But refs aren’t entirely to blame. As fans, we’ve come to expect a certain degree of omission bias, so much so that even the
right
call can be what the rules would suggest is the wrong call.Walt Coleman is the sixth-generation owner of Arkansas’s Coleman Dairy, the largest dairy west of the Mississippi River. He is also an NFL official. (We told you these guys were exceptional.) Late in a 2002 playoff game between the Patriots and the Raiders, New England quarterback Tom Brady was sacked and appeared to fumble. After reviewing the play, Coleman, as referee, overturned the call and declared the pass incomplete, invoking the obscure “tuck rule” (NFL Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2, Note 2), which states:
    When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward