Study: Notre Dame Has The 105th Best Home Field Advantage In College Football
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Notre Dame has a legendary college football program, and just saying the words "South Bend," makes you think of Saturdays in the Fall.
According to one study, Notre Dame may have a legendary football program, but they don't have much of a home field advantage.
A study by Prediction Machine says the Fighting Irish have the 105th best home field advantage in all of college football. Oklahoma came out on top of the rankings, followed by Wisconsin, UCLA, MIssouri, and Nevada.
Penn State ranked 45th overall, Rutgers ranks 58th, and Temple 59th.
The study focuses on home field advantage in relation to gambling point spreads.
"Homefield advantage in college football is typically presumed to mean "about three points" (the average right now is actually closer to 3.8) difference in the final score," Prediction Machine's Paul Bessire writes. "This means that if two teams are identical, neither team should be favored on a neutral field, while the home team would be favored by about three if they played at one of the team's stadium. This can lead to essentially a six point swing from one venue to the next. The truth is that some stadiums could actually mean up to nine points, while some do not help much at all. This research has been directly applied to the college football engine for the upcoming season."
"I focused on players in the general explanation of the homefield advantage results, but, one of the main reasons that homefield advantage exists to some degree in every sport that we project relates to an inherent bias by officials to support the home team (fair or not - I would say not, yet it appears to be human nature). Reviewing these rankings and considering that conference games are officiated by conference-affiliated crews, a reasonable argument could be made that officiating in some conferences (like the SEC and MAC) has been more neutral than others (like the Big Ten and Big 12)," Bessire says. "Another obvious element behind this is that teams from conferences lower on this list score fewer points than most at the top of this list. We have always believed in viewing homefield advantage as a modifier to per-play statistics and not a flat value so this is good to see and will continue to be incorporated."
The entire results of the study can be seen HERE.
