MLS: Fouls Per Game

In my previous post about fouls in MLS, I noticed that the numbers really didn't add up when it came to fouls committed (FC) and fouls suffered (FS). Here's proof, throughout the years: FC FS Diff Min 1996 4432 4386 46 14400 1997 4583 4579 4 14400 1998 5402 5132 270 17280 1999 5551 5285 266 17280 2000 6489 6236 253 17280 2001 5211 4966 245 14551.5 2002 4559 4364 195 12897 2003 4836 4584 252 13982 2004 4573 4348 225 13500 2005 5670 5432 238 17280 2006 5573 5297 276 17280 This is taken from the "league stats" pages on MLSnet. Every year, there are more FC than FS. Are some things like handballs considered fouls, or it is just poor stat keeping? I'd really like to know the answer. At least it's been reasonably consistent on the difference. What's also funny is that if you go to the team stats pages, the totals are sometimes slightly different there. I believe that's due to recent years not including the goalkeeper stats on the team stats pages. Minutes is the total number of minutes played in the season (aka all team totals divided by 2). Blame MLS for having an uneven number in 2001. Let's take a look at the averages per 90 minutes: FC FS 1996 27.7 27.4 1997 28.6 28.6 1998 28.1 26.7 1999 28.9 27.5 2000 33.8 32.5 2001 32.2 30.7 2002 31.8 30.5 2003 31.1 29.5 2004 30.5 29.0 2005 29.5 28.3 2006 29.0 27.6 This is per 90 minutes rather than per game due to the overtime games from 2000-3. Why was there an increase in 2000? No clue. There was a big increase in scoring that year, and it was also Don Garber's first season in charge. I wonder if they changed things in 1998, due to the differences between FC and FS? That's about the same time the number of assists increased greatly as well, although the big jump there was from 1996 to 1997.