Identifying Areas of Bias in National Football League Pro Bowl Fan Voting

The National Football League’s Pro Bowl game features the league’s best players voted on by coaches, players, and fans. Being selected to a Pro Bowl is significant to a player, as it comes with contract incentives, endorsement opportunities, and accolades that are critical for Hall of Fame consideration. However, due to the emerging media presence, different fans consume different media, resulting in very different perceptions and opinions of players around the league. Because of this, certain players who are deserving of Pro Bowl votes are not receiving them from fans because of the fans’ bias towards other teams or players, unawareness of the player’s on-field performance, or other factors heavily influenced by their fandom and the media surrounding them. The purpose of this study was to determine where bias exists amongst different groups of fans and where bias exists amongst the different ways of presenting player statistics and information to fans to ultimately suggest ways to present player statistics and information within the Pro Bowl voting process to mitigate the biases found. Results show that bias does exist between multiple groups of fans and the presentation of statistics and information shown to them, and suggestions to mitigate bias revolve around redesigning the presentation of statistics and information presented to fans within the Pro Bowl voting process.