It's well documented the B1G refs throw fewer flags than the other P5 leagues. I always wager the under in P yards relative to avg, since those games include OOC refs from Aug. And Sept.
I believe XII consistently is #1 in penalties.
not sure that's the case this season so far.
when sorting for conf games only, if this were true you'd expect b1g teams to be huddled near the low end of pen/g, and conversely the bigxii near the top end. neither is true so far this season.
using only p5 conference, the acc is the least penalized, with the sec the most (but not most severely, see below).
the ave rank (again, only p5, so 65 teams (nd included)) of each conf is (simple rank sum/total teams in conf):
| 20.43 | /33.93 | /36.50 | /35.50 | /41.43 |
| acc | /b1g | /12 | /pac | /sec |
the ave penalties/g/team/conf is (sum of pen/g per team/ total teams in conf):
| 5.26 | /6.36 | /6.53 | /6.33 | /6.79 |
| acc | /b1g | /12 | /pac | /sec |
the acc has a huddle of teams near the lower middle (teens-20s)
the b1g has a nice spread from top to bottom
the big12 has 2 clusters, 1 near top, 1 nearer bottom
pac has decent spread, with small cluster near center
sec has cluster near middle/top middle, with none in top 20 (everyone else has at least 3)
as for yardage, the b1g leads slightly, meaning their penalties slightly tend to be the larger ones more so than other confs. ave pen yds/g/team/conf:
| 45.09 | /61.91 | /59.30 | /59.77 | /58.31 |
| acc | /b1g | /12 | /pac | /sec |
sec drops to 2nd best from worst, falling more inline with the others (sans acc), meaning theirs tend to be of the less severe penalties.
this is confirmed in the yds/pen, which is here:
| 8.65 | /9.75 | /9.06 | /9.42 | /8.56 |
| acc | /b1g | /12 | /pac | /sec |
sec drops down further to #1, with acc coming more inline with the rest.
so for sec, even though they get the most penalties on ave, theirs tend to be either less severe, or closer to goallines.
as far as any bias towards bluebloods and/or title contenders, etc, i don't see it after a glance. in fact, it could be argued bias against the contenders, as all but clemson (15), nd (13) (used only games vs p5 opp in chart), and lsu (27) are in top half, with the rest (bama 38, texas 44, ou 41, osu 61, mich 46, wash st 52, uga 43, uf 63) in bottom half.
here is raw data (pulled from cfbstats.com and dropped into excel) if anyone wants to play with it:
