The college football landscape is changing literally and figuratively this season, as the Pac-12 is back with eight teams, the Mountain West looks a lot different, and a team from California will play in the MAC. Home-field advantage is probably more dynamic than ever, in the sense that it depends on a variety of factors. Having one simple baseline probably isn’t enough, but having something is better than nothing and that has been my approach over the last several seasons.
Playing at home is never really going to be a bad thing, so there is still an inherent “advantage”, even though its value will always be subjective. Weather, rest, travel, and all of the usual factors come into play, but there are others. A night game in Death Valley (either one) is going to carry more weight than a noon kickoff against a Group of Six school. A school where the basketball program outpaces the football program could see home-field lessened once November rolls around and students are more invested in hoops. How invested are the alums and adults in that particular program nowadays? It’s very hard to pin down these qualitative factors.
But, at least if we have some kind of value in mind, we can adjust accordingly, whether we actually attempt to quantify all of those variables or just keep them in mind when handicapping the game. To find that baseline, I’ve decided to take a three-year sample of home records, as that would seem to capture the team’s current state and also create a sample size large enough to minimize some noise. With over 100 different head coaches and thousands of transfers in FBS over the last three seasons, even three years may be tricky, but it seems like a happy medium.
Based on the straight up (SU) and against the spread (ATS) home win percentages for these teams, I’ve created a series of buckets. The standard home-field advantage I’ve settled on is two points. For teams that sit between 40% and 59.99% at home, their home-field advantage is two points. For teams above or below those thresholds, the HFA varies.
For this season, there are 24 teams with my max HFA of 3.5 points for having a SU + ATS Win% of 70% or higher. There are 16 teams with 3 points of HFA for a SU + ATS Win% of 65-69.99%. There are 24 teams with 2.5 points of HFA for 60-64.99%.
On the flip side, there are eight teams with 1.5 points of HFA for 35.01-39.99% and eight teams with 1 point of HFA for 35% or lower. Again, I want to stress that I consider these numbers to be starting points for creating point spreads on games. All of those factors and variables mentioned above should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
The home records are courtesy of Steve Makinen and his extensive database, so my thanks go out to our VSiN Analytics Guru.
Here are those teams for the 2026 season:
3.5 Points (SU + ATS Home Win% of 70% or Higher)
- Alabama
- Boise State
- BYU
- Georgia Southern
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Jacksonville State
- James Madison
- Marshall
- Miami (OH)
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- North Dakota State
- Notre Dame
- Ohio
- Ohio State
- Oregon
- SMU
- Texas
- Texas Tech
- Toledo
- UTSA
- Washington
- Western Michigan
3 Points (65-69.99%)
- Arizona
- Ball State
- Central Michigan
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Georgia Tech
- Hawaii
- Kansas State
- LSU
- Miami (FL)
- Oklahoma
- South Florida
- USC
- Utah State
- Washington State
- Western Kentucky
2.5 Points (60-64.99%)
- Arkansas State
- Colorado
- Duke
- Eastern Michigan
- Florida State
- Georgia
- Illinois
- Iowa State
- Kennesaw State
- Liberty
- Memphis
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Navy
- North Carolina State
- North Texas
- Penn State
- Pitt
- TCU
- Tennessee
- Tulane
- UNLV
- Utah
- Vanderbilt
*Note: Any team between 40-59.99% has a standard HFA of 2 points.*
1.5 Points (35.01-39.99%)
- Arkansas
- Baylor
- Florida Atlantic
- Michigan State
- Middle Tennessee
- Northern Illinois
- Stanford
- UCLA
1 Point (35% or Lower)
- Charlotte
- Georgia State
- Kent State
- Massachusetts
- Nevada
- Purdue
- Tulsa
- UTEP
With the HFA numbers established for all 138 FBS teams, those are then put together with my college football power ratings to produce a game spread. If my power ratings have Ohio State 14 points better than USC and the game is in Columbus, that would make my line on the game Buckeyes -17.5 with their 3.5 points of home-field advantage.
This season, I expect to have some deviations on a week-to-week basis in conference play, since we have Sacramento State in the MAC, Northern Illinois in the Mountain West, and Texas State in the Pac-12, just as some examples of conference realignment and how those teams will be visiting new venues, playing at elevation, or having long travel with some odd kickoff times. Similarly, teams that go to them will be doing something different.
As I continue to say, home-field advantage is an “inexact science”, but a true case of ‘something is better than nothing’ and at least there is some sort of criteria that teams meet in order to have the values that they do.
