Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Value of Homefield Advantage 2007 Week 11

One of the things I've learned in my football research is that the value of home-field advantage varies pretty widely from year to year, especially with interconference games. Because prediction systems tend to have a big bias towards the home team, this can have a large impact on accuracy. So throughout the season, I'll be keeping track of home team winning percentage and average final score margin (home team points - away team points) for interconference, interdivision, and intradivision matchups. If you're interested in that sort of thing, it can help you with betting on the spread (hint).

All Games
Home Team Win %: 55.0000%
Avg. Final Score Margin: 1.6563

Interconference
Home Team Win %: 61.3636%
Avg. Final Score Margin: 4.3409

Interdivision, Intraconference
Home Team Win %: 67.8571%
Avg. Final Score Margin: 4.0357

Intradivsion
Home Team Win %: 38.3333%
Avg. Final Score Margin: -2.5333