Home Field Advantage: More Ramblings

In the last post, I looked at home field advantage and generally made the case that it does not have a legitimate impact on the outcome of games, and any advantage that it generates -- if there is any at all -- is essentially so small that it is statistically insignificant.

In this post, things will be a bit more general and a bit more rambling, with little concrete conclusions. That aside, it will still contain relevant things.

For starters, exactly what gives home teams an advantage?

In football, unlike baseball, the dimensions of the playing field are static, and never change regardless of where you play. It doesn't matter if you play in Tacoma, Washington or Miami, Florida, the field is still 100 yards long, 53 1/2 yards wide, with two end zones both 10 yards long. The uprights, too, are the same. The base of the crossbar is 10 feet high, and the width of the uprights is 16 1/2 feet. Same goes for the pylons: 4 inches by 4 inches, and 18 inches high. Hell, even the directional arrows by the yard markers are the exact same: an isosceles triangle with two sides at 36 inches, and the base at 18 inches. At bottom, there are no differences whatsoever in the dimensions of the field, regardless of where you play, so it's not like baseball where hitter's parks v. pitcher's parks can give a particular team an advantage.

Moreover, there's no special object on the field to make a difference. In basketball, though the dimensions of the court never change, different arenas have different tightness levels to the rim, and that can dramatically change a team's shooting abilities, and therefore have a major impact on their overall scoring. But again, in football you have nothing like that.

Playing surfaces can make a difference, no doubt there. In the past, particularly in the NFL, teams with fast surfaces (Astro Turf, primarily) built teams around speed, and they would have an advantage at home, and of course when they would go to opposing team's stadiums with poor, slow surfaces, they would be at a disadvantage, thus giving the opposing home team an advantage. But in the SEC -- and most places for that matter -- you just don't have very different playing surfaces. Generally speaking, they are all pretty much the same. Just about everyone uses natural grass, and even the ones that don't use the FieldTurf that is highly similar to natural grass. At bottom, there's nothing between those two that would create an advantage for one team and a disadvantage for the other. Moreover, no one in the SEC pulls a Notre Dame (letting the grass grow ridiculously high and thick before a big game) in order to slow down faster teams. In reality, the only real differences in playing surfaces at SEC schools are the aesthetic differences. At bottom, the playing surfaces are just so similar throughout the SEC that it can't really make any real impact.

Climates, too, can also create an advantage for one team and a disadvantage for others, no doubt about it. Teams used to playing in the muck and mud of a torn up field (a good example is the Chicago Bears), build teams designed to play in those conditions, and when speedy teams that often play in domes (a good example is the New Orleans Saints) must go on the road to play those teams, that creates a distinct advantage for the home team. But again, we really don't have that in the SEC, or anywhere else in college football for that matter. Conferences are so geographically based that the climates are generally the same regardless of which school is in question. The SEC is the perfect example; generally all SEC games are played in roughly the same conditions, aside from a game in which it might randomly rain, and even those are rare (Alabama usually averages less than one game per year that is affected in any way by the rain). So, that too has no real effect.

So then what is it that makes a difference?

Could it be that teams are generally afraid of going on the road?

That's something that I could very easily imagine a juvenile (in terms of maturity, not age) fan saying, but that's really laughable more than anything else. Seriously, exactly what is there to be "afraid" of? For one, players are rarely subjected to physical danger outside the playing field, and even if they were, so what? Modern day Division 1-A football players are largely physical freaks of nature, and they could rip a normal person to shreds if they wanted. You can rest assured they aren't worried about that. So again, what is there to be "afraid" of? Or, forget that, Hell, what is there to not even like about a road trip? Think about it, these guys are chauffeured to airports in swanky buses, with a full police escort the entire way, at which point they board luxurious charter jets. Once boarded, they get big, roomy seats with newly-released in-flight movies, customized to player and coach preferences, and world-class cuisine; sufficed to say, no pack of peanuts and a twelve-ounce Diet Coke for these guys. Once they arrive at the final destination, they unload and again they are chauffeured in swanky buses, with a full police escort, to the finest hotel in the surrounding area. Once there, they are waited on hand and foot, and in most cases later go out on the town. So, again, exactly what is there to be "afraid" of on a road trip? If anything, it seems like these players are having the time of their lives. All I can say is that I wish I got a similar weekend getaway four-to-five times per year for free like those guys do. At bottom, though, as said earlier, this argument is just laughable.

The only thing left that I could think of is crowd noise, and honestly that is the one that is generally most talked about. But exactly what impact does crowd noise have?

Supposedly opposing team's players get "rattled," but I have to admit that I really don't know what that means. And I really don't think there is much to it. Crowd noise is crowd noise, and believe it or not this is not NCAA Football 2008 where players become mentally retarded and physically inept. Much like the "afraid" notion, there's probably not much to this.

The notion that crowd noise affects communication, particularly with audibles, does seem very plausible, which puts it much higher than most other arguments regarding a real rationale for home field advantage. But really, how big of an impact can be that be? As we've seen in the past, coaches at this level are very good, and players are generally well prepared. Coaches know they will be going into loud environments, and they do game-plan accordingly. They install more hand-check audibles (as opposed to verbal audibles shouted out to other players), and they also install default adjustments if an opponent gives a certain look. Moreover, let's be brutally honest here, coaches generally keep their quarterbacks walking the tight and narrow, and most are on a short leash in terms of audibles. They simply aren't allowed to do it very much, for the most part, and the ones that are allowed to do so generally can only check into a few plays. This isn't like the NFL where quarterbacks routinely have the permission to completely change a play to whatever they want at their own volition. So, the impact there is largely limited by quarterbacks not being able to change the play that much in a given situation, particularly one that the coaching staff expected and are therefore presumably prepared for.

Moreover, the most important point regarding crowd noise is that, unlike everyone assumes, it makes it difficult for both teams. Fans don't really cheer for or against anyone, for the most part. At bottom, as a whole, it's just a whole bunch of yelling and screaming, and all told it's just loud. It's not like it's like a rock concert for the road team and it's quite as a museum for the home team. Both must deal with the crowd noise effectively. You may say that the crowd noise affects the road team's offense from audibling, but at the same time it also equally affects the home team's defense from audibling (and yes, defenses do audible, and often times they do it just as much as the offense).

Then some people say that they want the stadium silent when the home team has the ball, but rocking when the opposing team has the ball. And that's absurd, it makes no difference whatsoever. Sure, it's quiet for your offense, but it's quiet for the opposing defense too. You can freely adjust with no crowd interference, and so can they. And of course the exactly same thing goes for the opposite situation, where the noise makes it more difficult to adjust for both the opposing offense and the home defense. There is simply no net advantage for the home team.

At bottom, it's hard to see much of an advantage from crowd noise. After all, how can crowd noise be an advantage for the home team and a disadvantage for the road team, when it seemingly has the exact same strategical effect on both teams?

All told, the crowd noise argument is more plausible than most other rationales for the existence of home field advantage, but it too is not particularly convincing.

And beyond that, how do we know which stadiums are really the loudest?

I know the answer to that one: We don't.

Don't kid yourself, we have no clue whatsoever as to which stadiums are the loudest, nor does anyone who claims to know so. The reason for that is simple: no one has ever done any empirical test whatsoever of stadium noise levels. And until someone does a legitimate empirical study in which they take decibel meters into every Division 1-A stadium and measure the loudness of those stadiums on a consistent basis, and then rank them based on how loud they were on the decibel meter, we won't know. And, of course, no one has ever even attempted something remotely close to that.

Moreover, first person testimonials saying X Stadium is the loudest are simply not legitimate in any real sense. For one, you can find testimonials of people saying about thirty or more different stadiums are the loudest, and that's not quite the case, obviously. There can only be one "loudest" stadium, by definition, period. Moreover, individual testimonies are subject to bias and other perception-based distortions. For any findings to be credible and legitimate, crowd levels must be measured on an objective basis that is free from human biases. Finally -- and this is the main reason first person testimonials are not legitimate -- the level of crowd noise as perceived by an individual is determined almost wholly by the noise in the area immediately surrounding him / her. As a student at Alabama, you would have times in which the stadium seem deafening, but it was really just the student section. Again, from one physical location -- which of course is the most any human can be at during one time-frame -- you are not hearing how loud the entire stadium is, but how loud the immediate area surrounding you at that time. Even if you did a study with decibel meters, you would have to place them strategically throughout the stadium in order to figure out how loud the stadium was as a whole. Again, first person testimonials to stadium noise levels are simply not legitimate.

The bottom line is this with regard to stadium noise levels: Until someone does an empirical study in which they measure the noise levels in stadiums with strategically played decibel meters on a consistent basis, and then does a comparison analysis, we don't know which stadiums are truly the loudest. I don't care how many juvenile fans brag about their stadium being the loudest. I don't care what ESPN sideline reporters say. Bottom line. We. Simply. Do. Not. Know.