Determining college football’s true home-field advantage:

One of the most important and debated factors in handicapping college football games is in determining how much weight to be given to home-field advantage. The numbers have varied greatly in recent years and were influenced greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic and the policies instituted by conferences or teams, but now that we’re back in what seems to be full-blown normalcy again, it never hurts to look at the subject closely again to see if anything has changed. 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 of college football were 1) Has home-field advantage picked up or dropped off recently? 2) Have oddsmakers adjusted appropriately for any changes? 3) Have any teams at the various levels of football set themselves apart in terms of home-field performance?  

 

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In my history of oddsmaking, and since doing the strength ratings for VSiN, I have always found that one of the most important factors in analyzing teams’ strengths is determining how much home-field advantage to assign. I remember many years ago always hearing that three points should be the typical HFA. It actually dropped in half when the games were played in empty or near-empty stadiums during the pandemic. I also know some handicappers issue a standard two to three points depending on how much they value that particular factor. Others such as myself develop team-specific home-field edges, assuming some environments are tougher than others across the football landscape.

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 for a visiting team. I am 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 missed betting opportunities. I am also sure that 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 2021 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 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 the team accumulated in those games. Obviously, the teams that had a greater actual differential than expected differential played the “best” at home. The margins went as high as +10.0 for James Madison out of the Sun Belt to -4.3 for Charlotte of the American Athletic.

Of course, no reasonable oddsmaker would ever assign a home-field edge of 10 points to James Madison, as that would encourage one-sided action on its opponents. However, the Dukes are worthy of your betting consideration when oddsmakers don’t give them the respect they perhaps deserve when playing as hosts. Just this season they are 5-0 SU and 3-2 ATS at home, and applying more than the standard two to three points when they play in Harrisonburg is certainly warranted. They will host Marshall in their season finale next weekend.

Alternatively, there is no way that those setting the lines could penalize Charlotte when it plays at home, but to give them the full credit of three or more points would also be too much. The 49ers are 1-4 SU and 2-3 ATS as hosts in 2024 but did fire their coach recently, and it could have a lot to do with losing what was a significant home-field edge before Biff Poggi arrived in 2022. In fact, they are just 3-15 at home in the last three seasons after going 14-6 in the four years prior. That is a good illustration of how quickly things can turn in terms of analyzing home-field advantage. 

In general, I believe most bookmakers will assign an average of about 3.0 points to a home team in a college football game. In this study, I have personally found that the true number is closer to 2.5 for the last 3 1/2 seasons, with that number actually trending around the 2.5 mark for a third straight season. In fact, at this point, I have adjusted all of my college HF ratings and they average 2.5 points.

One important thing to note, I don’t specifically assign the home-field ratings following the exact 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 in which a team won or lost big have tended to falsely affect the overall ratings. That said, again for 2024, I have removed the two best and two 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 football home-field advantage study, then stay tuned over the next couple of days as I do the same exercise for road performance. 

College Football Home-Field Advantage Study Highlights

· Collectively, the conference with the best overall true home-field advantage rating is the Sun Belt at +3.6. That is well ahead of the Big 12 at 3.1 and the SEC at 2.8. Keep this in mind as you handicap the final two weeks of the regular season as I believe that home-field advantage tends to mean a little more as we get deeper into the season.

· Two conferences have collective true home-field advantage ratings of less than 2.0 points. They are the Big Ten (+1.9) and the MAC (+1.0). If you really stop and consider what the 1.0 rating means, MAC home teams have actually held little advantage collectively in recent years. We’ve noticed in MACtion a bunch lately. It is quite interesting that the two worst leagues are the conferences in the Midwest. Are teams in that area just better equipped to play on the road? I guess we’ll see in the road-field study follow-up to this piece in a couple of days.

· One FBS team is undefeated at home over the last 3 1/2 seasons — Georgia at 24-0. However, the Bulldogs’ true home-field value is only 1.2 as they are underperforming as hosts, as further evidenced by their 9-14 ATS record in that span. Two other teams have just one loss — Alabama (26-1) and Oregon (25-1). Of the three, only Georgia is at home this weekend, but all three will host games on the final day of the regular season, Nov. 30. Ohio State, Michigan and Texas-San Antonio also have enjoyed great outright success at home lately.

· The worst outright record for any college football team at home since the start of the 2021 season belongs to Stanford at 5-20. UMass also has just five wins against 17 losses. The Cardinal sprung a major surprise this past weekend at home by upsetting Louisville and hopes to take the momentum from that home finale into 2025. The Minutemen’s next home game is next Saturday versus rival UConn.

· Only one team has an ATS record better than 70% at home since the start of the 2021 season — Oregon State, which is 18-7 ATS in that span. However, the Beavers have been a major disappointment in 2024, going just 1-5 ATS. I have lost on multiple occasions backing OSU this season as the trend has turned quickly. Other teams that have fared well against the betting number at home in recent years include James Madison (17-8 ATS), Alabama (18-9 ATS) and SMU (16-8 ATS).

· Five college football teams are under 30% ATS at home over the last 3 1/2 seasons. They are Stanford (6-18 ATS), Charlotte (6-16 ATS), Tulsa (6-16 ATS), Purdue (7-18 ATS) and Northern Illinois (6-15 ATS). None hosts an opponent on Saturday so we’ll have to wait till next week to take advantage.

· The three teams that have played to the average biggest point spreads at home in recent seasons are no surprise. They are Georgia (-30.6), Ohio State (-30.1) and Alabama (-27). No other team is within six points.

· Three teams have been worse than five-point average underdogs at home in recent seasons — Vanderbilt (+7.4), UMass (+6.1) and Louisiana-Monroe (+5.0).

· Seven teams have averaged at least 40 PPG in their home games over the last 3 1/2 seasons, they are:

SMU – 45.7 PPG

OHIO STATE – 45.0

TENNESSEE – 44.2

ALABAMA – 43.5

JAMES MADISON – 42.7

GEORGIA – 40.5

NORTH CAROLINA – 40.1

· Six teams have allowed 14 PPG or less in home games since the start of the 2021 season:

GEORGIA – 10.3 PPG

OHIO STATE – 12.0

PENN STATE – 12.3

TEXAS A&M – 13.1

IOWA – 13.5

MICHIGAN – 13.8

· The only four teams that have outscored opponents by more than 27 PPG at home since 2021 are Ohio State (+33 PPG), Georgia (+30.2 PPG), James Madison (+27.9 PPG) and Alabama (+27.3 PPG).

· Comparing how much teams have won by at home with how much they were supposed to win by based on average power ratings, the top teams for true home-field advantage over the last 3 1/2 seasons are:

1. James Madison +10.0

2. Louisville +8.7

3. Oregon State +8.3

4. SMU +7.9

5. Kansas State +7.7

6. Louisiana-Monroe +7.3

7. Tennessee +7.0

Of those seven teams, only Louisville and Tennessee are at home this weekend, hosting Pittsburgh and UTEP, respectively.

· The teams with the worst true home-field advantage ratings based on their home performances over the last 3 1/2 seasons have been:

1. Charlotte -4.3

2. Miami FL -2.7

3. Georgia State -2.4

4. Northern Illinois -2.3

5. Tulsa -2.1

6. Akron -2.0

Concerning the games for this weekend, be careful with Miami, which hosts Wake Forest on Saturday. 

Here’s the list of all 134 FBS teams and their home-field performance on the chart below. They are sorted in order of TRUE HOME-FIELD ADVANTAGE rating.

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