Post by eric on May 21, 2018 21:29:47 GMT
In the three major and one mid-major professional American sports, games have one home team and one away team. This (almost) always means that the home team is playing in the location where they play most of their games. Aside from baseball, there is no other substantial advantage conferred to either team. For example NFL away teams call a coin toss, which if fair is irrelevant.
I couldn't help but wonder, in which of these four sports is home advantage the strongest?
Home may be where the heart is, but where are the runs, points, or puck-de-fleurs?
.
So I went back to the 2009 seasons of each sport and tallied how often the home team won. (Hockey fan: I didn't want to get into the weeds of shootout loser points, half the overs, etc., so I just did wins divided by losses.) This is more constructive than looking at the playoffs because (almost) every team will play the exact same number of home games as every other team in a league, whereas playoffs award home advantage to the team with the better record, which usually means they're the better team, which would introduce a confounding variable to our analysis.
Nice try, Steve Jobs.
Pretty wild stuff!
A priori I would have guessed MLB had by far the highest home advantage considering it's actually part of the rules that the home team has an advantage (they are allowed to bat in the bottom of the ninth if necessary) plus baseball fields vary by far the most of any of these sports, which should also be an advantage both from team construction and player familiarity. And yet, MLB home winning percentage is by far the lowest.
I would have guessed the NFL number two, since while the field dimensions are at least fixed, the field composition and atmosphere can be very different from (for example) New England's exposure to New England winter to Indianapolis' ivory tower climate controlled liberal elite fakenews grass sterile utopia. Alas, they are second lowest.
As demonstrated in the mockumentary Hoosiers, the basket et al is the same height in every arena. Legends persist of Larry Bird shunting opposing dribbles onto dead spots in the old parquet floor, but in this period everyone has a pretty identical floor too.
And then there's the NHL. Notably the standard deviation (how much the home winning percentage varies year to year) is very high relative to the other leagues', but even taking that into account home ice is by far the biggest advantage. I looked it up and apparently there are a couple rules that give the home NHL team an advantage, but outside of shootouts they look pretty innocuous to me: visitor has to put his stick down first at face-offs, home team gets right of last sub at stoppages.
.
.
But wait, there's more! It occurred to me that looking at raw win percentage might not be the way to go, since win % parity itself is not constant across leagues. So I took the standard deviation of win percentages in each league and divided that into the home % defined above beyond .500:
WOW!
WOW!!
WOOOOOOOOOW!!! h/t men in blazers
I don't know wtf is going on in the NHL. But the NFL being by far the lowest makes me wonder if brute travel time is relevant to our calculations.
-The NFL has a game about once a week, which in the modern era gives plenty of time to travel from point A to point B.
-MLB games are overwhelmingly back to back, but they're also in the same city for multiple days at a time even when on the road.
-The NBA and NHL both overwhelmingly do NOT play in the same road city for multiple days, and while the NBA at least is trying to phase out back to backs both leagues still have them.
Thus I think travel is the active ingredient, and while MLB is functionally as forgiving as the NFL, the actual existence of home field advantage bumps up their figure. The two leagues with the harshest travel are the highest, and the NHL is much higher because let's face it NHL players are the least tough of any of these leagues.
That's it, thanks for reading! :)
I couldn't help but wonder, in which of these four sports is home advantage the strongest?
Home may be where the heart is, but where are the runs, points, or puck-de-fleurs?
.
So I went back to the 2009 seasons of each sport and tallied how often the home team won. (Hockey fan: I didn't want to get into the weeds of shootout loser points, half the overs, etc., so I just did wins divided by losses.) This is more constructive than looking at the playoffs because (almost) every team will play the exact same number of home games as every other team in a league, whereas playoffs award home advantage to the team with the better record, which usually means they're the better team, which would introduce a confounding variable to our analysis.
Nice try, Steve Jobs.
home% stdev league
.538 .010 MLB
.591 .012 NBA
.569 .015 NFL
.630 .026 NHLPretty wild stuff!
A priori I would have guessed MLB had by far the highest home advantage considering it's actually part of the rules that the home team has an advantage (they are allowed to bat in the bottom of the ninth if necessary) plus baseball fields vary by far the most of any of these sports, which should also be an advantage both from team construction and player familiarity. And yet, MLB home winning percentage is by far the lowest.
I would have guessed the NFL number two, since while the field dimensions are at least fixed, the field composition and atmosphere can be very different from (for example) New England's exposure to New England winter to Indianapolis' ivory tower climate controlled liberal elite fake
As demonstrated in the mockumentary Hoosiers, the basket et al is the same height in every arena. Legends persist of Larry Bird shunting opposing dribbles onto dead spots in the old parquet floor, but in this period everyone has a pretty identical floor too.
And then there's the NHL. Notably the standard deviation (how much the home winning percentage varies year to year) is very high relative to the other leagues', but even taking that into account home ice is by far the biggest advantage. I looked it up and apparently there are a couple rules that give the home NHL team an advantage, but outside of shootouts they look pretty innocuous to me: visitor has to put his stick down first at face-offs, home team gets right of last sub at stoppages.
.
.
But wait, there's more! It occurred to me that looking at raw win percentage might not be the way to go, since win % parity itself is not constant across leagues. So I took the standard deviation of win percentages in each league and divided that into the home % defined above beyond .500:
home adv league
.565 MLB
.574 NBA
.352 NFL
1.412 NHLWOW!
WOW!!
WOOOOOOOOOW!!! h/t men in blazers
I don't know wtf is going on in the NHL. But the NFL being by far the lowest makes me wonder if brute travel time is relevant to our calculations.
-The NFL has a game about once a week, which in the modern era gives plenty of time to travel from point A to point B.
-MLB games are overwhelmingly back to back, but they're also in the same city for multiple days at a time even when on the road.
-The NBA and NHL both overwhelmingly do NOT play in the same road city for multiple days, and while the NBA at least is trying to phase out back to backs both leagues still have them.
Thus I think travel is the active ingredient, and while MLB is functionally as forgiving as the NFL, the actual existence of home field advantage bumps up their figure. The two leagues with the harshest travel are the highest, and the NHL is much higher because let's face it NHL players are the least tough of any of these leagues.
That's it, thanks for reading! :)
