New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - Studies: teams wearing black jerseys are penalized more harshley

I had actually heard this as sort of an old wives' tale, long time ago (about the black jerseys).

I believe they also did a study in the early 2000s, using anonymous questionnaires and real refs, where they basically asked refs questions about the games they had just refereed, right afterwards, then stripped the names and the teams off the responses and evaluated what their impressions of the game were. I believe I remember reading that the study found that, the refs tend to make more game calls in favor of the team they think in their mind is "better," ruling pass completions, spotting first downs with generous forward progress, roughing the passer or punter with only minor contact etc. They reviewed the ref's responses anonymously, and then viewed the actual plays in question, it was really neat. I should look and see if I can find this online, it was really interesting. The article was around that time, the year we got totally screwed by the refs in that Carolina game that kinda cost us the division.