Could be more than subconscious. Lot's of people have to make decisions at their jobs where either choice carries a risk of being a mistake, and most of us are able to read the room well enough to know which is the "safe" choice and which is the one where your employer will take notice. I bet if these refs were willing to speak honestly, they would say "if I make a call that keeps OSU out of a playoff, and later review shows it was the wrong call, it's going to be a worse day for me than if I make a call that contributes to OSU pulling off an expected win and that call is proven to be wrong." So officials have to make calls, whatever they decide to do, they could be wrong, but it is safer to be wrong one direction than the other. Kind of like roughing the passer calls in pro football. If a star QB gets a season ending injury on a dirty hit and a ref doesn't even throw a flag, the league is going to be pretty angry at that ref. If a QB gets a season ending injury on a big but clean hit that gets a BS 15 yard penalty attached to it, it will just be marked as one of many incorrect call in their game report and no one is going to give it any more attention than "everyone misses a few, this was one of your misses."
Just to be clear, I am not wearing a tin foil hat suggesting there is a secret memo or back room meetings where the conference is telling refs to put the thumb on the scale for OSU. I just think the refs know where the safe ground is.