Determining college football’s true home-field advantage

Steve Makinen is our main numbers guy here at VSiN, and his weekly best bets are a “greatest hits” compilation of system matches, betting trends analysis, and his proprietary power ratings, which can only be found right here at VSiN.com. Follow up with Steve’s weekly content, which is linked in the explanations for his picks.

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I get as many requests from readers to update this article as anything else I do each year. And I know why. One of the most important and debated factors in handicapping college (and pro) football games is in determining how much weight to be given to home-field advantage. The numbers have varied greatly in recent years, what with empty or partially filled stadiums because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that we’ve had a few years in the “return to normal,” has anything changed? In my opinion, there’s never a bad time to revisit the subject of home-field advantage, and specifically, what it is worth from a quantitative perspective.

A few of the things I set out to find when breaking down my data over the last 3-1/2 seasons in college football were 1) Has home field advantage picked up since COVID stopped wreaking havoc on football? 2) Have oddsmakers adjusted appropriately for any changes? 3) Have any specific teams at the various levels of football set themselves apart in terms of home field performance.  

In my own history of oddsmaking, and since in doing the strength ratings for VSiN, I have always found that one of the most important factors in analyzing teams’ strengths in football, or any other sport for that matter, is determining how much home-field advantage to assign.

I remember many years ago always hearing that “3 points” should be the typical HFA. I also know that there are handicappers that do it from a general sense, issuing a standard 2-3 points depending upon how much they value that particular factor. Others, such as myself, develop team-specific home field edges, assuming that there are naturally tougher environments than others across the football landscape. For that latter group, I am here to help in your quest to determine which teams deserve the most home-field advantage points in college football.

Let’s face it, we almost have to do the team-specific method as bettors because there are many reasons why certain teams have a more definitive home-field advantage than others. Among these are weather, field surface as it fits the roster, crowd capacity/enthusiasm, confidence level of a team, and perhaps even distractions available to a visiting team while there. The degree to which these factor into play can also waver from season to season based on how a team is faring. I am 100% positive that there is no way that every team’s advantage is the same. Judging home field edges as equal across the board can lead to mistakes and either missed or lost betting opportunities. I am also 100% sure you will be convinced after I share my quantified performance results.

To determine which teams hold the best true home-field advantage in college football, I have taken the teams’ game logs at home since the start of the 2020 season, or essentially the last 3-1/2 seasons. I compared their average power rating in those games to their opponents’ average power rating, using my actual logged numbers during that span for every game. This margin would be considered the amount they should have won or lost by when meeting on a neutral field or the expected margin. I then compared this amount to the actual point differential that the team accumulated in those games. Obviously, the teams that had a greater actual differential than expected differential played the “best” at home. For college teams, the margins went as high as +10.7 for Louisville out of the ACC to -5.0 for Akron of the MAC.

Of course, no one would ever assign a home-field edge of 10.7 points to Louisville, as that would be a stretch. However, the Cardinals are worthy of your betting consideration when oddsmakers don’t give them the respect they perhaps deserve when playing as hosts. Just this year, they are 4-0 SU and ATS at home, and I have tailed them at least twice with my Best Bets this season in that spot.

The next home game for Louisville is Saturday, November 4, vs. Virginia Tech, and my power ratings are indicating that oddsmakers have not assigned enough edge to head coach Brian Brohm’s team. Alternatively, there is no way that those setting the lines could penalize Akron when it plays at home, but to give them the full credit of 3 or more points would also be too much. That said, Akron did come up with a home win and cover earlier this week in MAC-tion versus a downtrodden Kent State team.

In general, I believe most bookmakers will assign an average of about 3.0 points in a college football game to a home team. In this study, I found that the true college football number is closer to 2.2 for the last 3-1/2 seasons, with that number trending back upward towards 2.5 for a second straight season. In fact, at this point, I have adjusted all of my college home field ratings, and they average 2.5 points. This number takes into account the fan-less 2020 season.

One important thing to note, I don’t specifically assign the home field ratings in accordance with the order of the True Home Field Rating, as I also give strong consideration to the straight-up and ATS records, as well as the perceived difficulty of playing at a particular stadium. In recent years of this study, I have found that single games where a team won or lost big have tended to falsely impact the overall ratings. That said, new for 2023, I have removed the best and worst point spread losses for every team during the 3-1/2 year span from the calculations. These results are still noted in the SU and ATS records, but they didn’t factor into the formulas.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the other highlights I have found from my college home field advantage study, then stay tuned next week as I do the same exercise for road field performance.

College Football Home Field Advantage Study Highlights

• Collectively, the conference with the best overall true home-field advantage rating is the Big 12, at +3.0. That is well ahead of the next four groups at +2.5, which includes the Independents, Mountain West, SEC, and Sun Belt.
• Two conferences have collective true home-field advantage ratings of less than 1.5 points. They are the MAC (-0.2) and Big Ten (+1.4). If you stop and consider what the -0.2 rating means, MAC road teams have held the advantage over home teams collectively in recent years. It’s disadvantageous to play at home in that league, theoretically.
• There are no FBS teams that are undefeated at home in college football over the last 3-1/2 seasons, but there are three with just a single loss. They are Alabama (23-1), Georgia (21-1) and Oregon (18-1). As luck would have it, all three of those teams are, in fact, at home on Saturday. Alabama hosts LSU and Georgia welcomes Missouri in a pair of ranked vs. ranked matchups, while Oregon plays as a heavy favorite versus Cal. James Madison, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Clemson are other programs that have enjoyed great outright success at home lately.
• The worst outright record for any college football team at home since the start of the 2020 season belongs to Massachusetts, at 2-13. Stanford also has just three wins against 15 defeats. The Minutemen’s next home contest is Saturday versus FCS Merrimack. Stanford doesn’t return home until November 18^th. Of the other noteworthy Power 5 programs, Vanderbilt is next worst at 5-18 outright over the last 3-1/2 seasons. The Commodores host Auburn this week.
• Three teams have compiled ATS records better than 70% in college football at home since the start of the 2020 season. They are Oregon State (18-4 ATS), Alabama (17-7 ATS), and Kansas State (17-7 ATS). James Madison, Louisville, and West Virginia are the three others at exactly 70%. Only Alabama and Louisville are at home this week.
• There have been five college football teams to go under 30% ATS over the last 3-1/2 seasons at home. They are Stanford (4-14 ATS), Vanderbilt (5-18 ATS), Northern Illinois (4-14 ATS), Charlotte (4-13 ATS), and Purdue (6-15 ATS). Of these, only Vanderbilt hosts an opponent on Saturday.
• The four teams that have played to the average biggest point spreads at home in recent seasons are no surprise. That list is topped by Georgia (-28.6), and followed by Alabama (-28), Ohio State (-27.2), and Clemson (-24.8).
• Three teams have been worse than 8-point average underdogs at home in recent seasons of college football, and they are UMass (+10.5), Vanderbilt (+9.3), and UConn (+8.9).
• There have been nine college football teams that have averaged at least 40 PPG in their home games over the last 3-1/2 seasons. They are:

1. OHIO ST – 46.9 PPG
2. SMU – 44.6
3. ALABAMA – 43.4
4. JAMES MADISON – 42.7
5. OREGON – 41.9
6. NORTH CAROLINA – 41.1
7. TENNESSEE – 40.6
8. GEORGIA – 40
9. OKLAHOMA – 40

• There have been eight teams in college football that have allowed 16 PPG or fewer in home games since the start of the 2020 season. That list includes:

1. GEORGIA – 11.8 PPG
2. MICHIGAN – 11.9
3. IOWA – 14
4. ALABAMA – 14.9
5. JAMES MADISON – 15
6. WISCONSIN – 15.6
7. PENN ST – 16
8. TEXAS A&M – 16

• The only three teams that have outscored opponents by more than 28 PPG at home since 2020 are Ohio State (+29 PPG), Alabama (+28.5 PPG) & Georgia (+28.2).
• Using my formula comparing how much teams have won by at home as compared to how much they were supposed to win by based upon average power ratings, the top teams for true home field advantage in college football over the last 3 1/2 seasons have been:
  1. Louisville +10.7
  2. James Madison +9.0
  3. Oregon State +8.7
  4. Kansas State +7.7
  5. Tulane +6.4

Of those five teams, only Louisville is at home, hosting Virginia Tech.

• The teams with the worst true home field advantage ratings in all of college football based upon their home performances over the last 3 1/2 seasons have been:
  1. Akron -5.0
  2. Charlotte -4.5
  3. Vanderbilt -4.4
  4. Georgia Tech -4.1
  5. N Illinois -4.1

Concerning the games for this weekend, only Vanderbilt is at home against Auburn.

You will find the list of all 133 FBS teams and their home-field performance on the chart below. They are sorted in order of true home-field advantage rating.

VIEW COLLEGE TRUE HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE CHART

Read Steve Makinen’s study on the NFL’s true home-field advantage here.