Home Sweet Home

Experts often tell us about the importance of "Home Advantage", but what advantages does being at home give?  It's certainly true that playing in your own stadium is beneficial for most teams.  Currently, in the English Premier League 15 of the 20 teams have won more matches at home than away.  Last season, 47% of matches were won by the home team.  The figures are almost identical in the lower leagues.  It's a similar story in cricket and rugby; home advantage makes a difference.  There are a few possible explanations for this trend:

Crowd support - Thousands of people cheering for you and booing the opposition can only be a good thing.
Conditions - Weather and the playing surface.  Familiarity can be a big advantage.
Travel - Staying at home the night before a game is preferable to a long coach/plane trip.
Officials - Preferential treatment from referees/umpires.

The answer is probably a combination of each, as whilst there are stats that show that home advantage exists, there is no way of accurately quantifying the specific ways in which it exists.

A good reason why I'm not
supporting the Packers

In the NFL, a couple of the above factors would seem to be more significant than in most other sports.  The size of the USA means that teams have to travel massive distances during a season.  In the 2011 season, the San Francisco 49ers racked up a whopping 29,196 miles in order to fulfill their fixtures.  In addition, teams have to contend with wildly disparate weather conditions, ranging from the Arizona dessert to the frozen fields of Green Bay.  Clearly, being used to the conditions and not having to travel is a pretty good advantage to have.

The 12th man. Often better
than the other 11

The crowd  factor is more comparable to other sports, particularly football.  Some teams have famously loud crowds that spur on the home team, put off the away team and influence the officials decisions.  Other teams struggle to fill their stadium and have notoriously apathetic fans.  For a comparison, watch a Seattle home game and a Jacksonville home game back to back.
The overall effect is that home teams won 57.3% of matches last season, so whilst it's not an automatic winning ticket it does help.  The topic of "home field advantage" is a favourite topic for NFL analysts when play-off season comes around, and they are always keen to stress its importance to a team's Superbowl chances.

The NFL schedule (which is far too dull to bother explaining) means teams play at a variety of different locations every season, but the constant factor is that they play 8 home games per year.  As such, I don't want to support a team that doesn't perform in front of their own fans.  I want a team that respond to the crowds cheers, a team that makes the most of the familiar conditions and benefits from the lack of travel.  So, I'm going to eliminate the team with the worst home record of my survivors, and I'm going to base it on the last 3 seasons, giving us have a sample size of 24 matches:

(Figures show the number of home wins)

                                        2011                2010               2009                 Overall


Buffalo                            5                       2                      3                         10
Detroit                            5                       4                      2                         11
Houston                          5                       4                      4                         13
Minnesota                      1                       4                      8                         13
New York                       6                       5                      4                         15
Philadelphia                  3                       4                      6                         13


The dream is over! After clinging on for dear life for weeks, the Buffalo Bills finally bite the bullet.  Perhaps their long stay is down to my lack of stats based eliminations in recent rounds, but I felt such a round was due.  Again, it's not 100% fair, the NFL schedule means that everyone plays a different array of teams each year, so arguably Buffalo had the toughest schedule over the sample period.  Haven't said that, I think it's fair to say that the above table is reflective of each team's ability over the last 3 years.

"Have you got $59m for
a cup of tea"

I am a bit sad to get rid of the Bills, although I never seriously thought they'd win.  Everybody likes an underdog and I'm sure I would have enjoyed supporting the Bills, but in the real world can you honestly see them reaching the playoffs in the next few years?  Honestly?
Perhaps taking the "chosen one" mantle from the Bills, are the Detroit Lions.  Following last week's absurd stay of execution, they survived this week by one victory. What's more, after completing the process, I checked the stats based on doing the elimination over 4 seasons and guess who would have been eliminated?

Which brings us down to just 5 teams and only 4 more eliminations.  I've decided on the 4 methods I'm using, and can honestly say that it's impossible to predict any of the eliminations. I've got 2 stats based and 2 left-field methods - including the winner takes all final!

Next up, I'll be looking at the dilemma that often tells us who the bravest coaches are - "Do we go for it on 4th Down?"