Stumbled across this page when reading a Bama forum, of all places. The penalty stats are really interesting and reveal a couple of things that we probably suspected but didn't know for certain.

1. In terms of opponent penalties per game, Ohio State is 123rd in the country, meaning that only FOUR teams have had fewer opponent penalties called all year. Yes, we've played one fewer game than many teams, but if you go by average penalties per game, our average of 4.6 penalties per game puts us at 116th - still one of the worst in the country.

2. Switching to look solely at opponent penalty YARDAGE per game, arguably a more important statistic than penalties per game, the numbers favor Ohio State even less. At 181 yards, Ohio State ranks 127th in the country, with only New Mexico ranking lower. Truly a crazy statistic, though it certainly validates many of our suspicions that opponents don't get flagged at a comparable rate to our Buckeyes.

3. My personal favorite. You know how every Penn state fan ever strongly believes that the B1G is "out to get them", while giving Ohio State and Michigan all the breaks? Well, actually, they're all quite wrong - if not altogether delusional. Penn State - despite all of the collusion between the refs and conference administration - is 6th in the country in opponent penalties per game AND penalty yardage. Michigan, for comparison, ranks 45th in opponent penalties per game and 90th in opponent penalty yards. Sadly, Penn state fans are not typically receptive to facts, reason or logic, so I wouldn't expect these numbers to have any bearing on their collective delusion.

So, what's the cause of all this? Is it just bad luck, or have every one of our opponents been so on their game that they simply don't commit penalties against us? If anyone looked, Alabama is another interesting case, as they rank even farther below us in opposition penalties per game and only 5 spots ahead of us in overall opponent penalty yardage. Is this indicative of a perhaps subconscious bias against so-called "elite teams", who already have every conceivable advantage relative to most teams, therefore making them less likely to receive favorable (or borderline) penalty calls? Curious to see what the 11W community thinks. Here's the link:

http://www.cfbstats.com/2016/leader/national/team/defense/split01/catego...