Home field advantage

Post Reply
User avatar
RyanChristiansen
Posts: 483
Joined: Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:51 pm
Location: Fargo, ND

Home field advantage

Post by RyanChristiansen »

An interesting article about Miami’s home field advantage.

https://pilotonline.com/sports/football ... c9c9c.html

Growing up watching the Vikings, I remember we used to have a home field advantage due to weather effects, however anecdotal. I’ve looked at what I can find about weather effects on statistics like fumbles, interceptions, rushing, YAC, sacks, etc., but I couldn’t find anything entirely credible.
"Five seconds to go... A field goal could win it. Up in the air! Going deep! Tipped! Caught! Touchdown! The Vikings! They win it! Time has run out!" - Vikings 28, Browns 23, December 14, 1980, Metropolitan Stadium
User avatar
Rupert Patrick
Posts: 1746
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 7:53 pm
Location: Upstate SC

Re: Home field advantage

Post by Rupert Patrick »

I have complete home and road data for all teams and their stadiums, and the Dolphins HWA (Home Field Winning Advantage, or home winning percentage minus road winning percentage divided by two) at their current stadium (I still refer to it as Pro Player, I can't keep track of the names) is .0657, or .5789 home WPCT and .4476 road WPCT in regular season games. At the Orange Bowl, their HWA was .1005 (.7336 home/.5327 road), which means the Dolphins got a greater advantage from playing at the Orange Bowl. The fact that the Dolphin teams who played at the Orange Bowl were generally better teams (1966-86 overall WPCT .6328) than those who play at the current stadium (1987-17 overall WPCT .5131) is pretty much irrelevant when you see the graph. The HWA should be roughly the same for both stadiums should about the same according to the below graph of all 1,963 NFL, AFL and AAFC team-seasons from 1933-2017 with their winning percentage in the X and HWA in the Y and the least squares trendline dashed:

Image

From the above graph, the Dolphins at the Orange Bowl should have been expected to have an HWA of about .0755, while at the current stadium it should have been about .0739.

There is a second way of looking at home field advantage, and that is by point differential between home and road games, and I have developed a stat called HPA (Home Field Point Advantage, or home point differential per game minus road point differential per game divided by two). At the Orange Bowl, the Dolphins HPA was +3.34 Points (home differential +7.45 points, road differential +0.77), while at the current stadium the Dolphins HPA was +2.06 (home differential +2.03 points, road differential -2.09 points). Here is the HPA curve for all team-seasons 1933 to 2017, with the least squares trendline dashed:

Image

The Dolphins at the Orange Bowl should have had an expected HPA (according to the trendline) of about 2.72, which they exceeded by nearly two thirds of a point per game, and underperformed at the current stadium, with an expected HPA of 2.69 which they underperformed by nearly two-thirds of a point.

After reviewing the data for the Orange Bowl and the current stadium, I fail to see that the Dolphins are getting much of an advantage from their current playing field.
"Every time you lose, you die a little bit. You die inside. Not all your organs, maybe just your liver." - George Allen
Post Reply