About four years ago, I wrote this story for the Casper Star-Tribune about home-field advantage in high school football. It was more interesting to research than to write, and all the cool numbers that went with that story are not on the online version, but I found it fascinating — although not surprising — that every high school football team in Wyoming had a better winning percentage at home than on the road in the 50-year span of games from 1956-2005.
Of course, the teams that were traditionally best on the road were also best at home. What was most interesting to me was the list of teams who had either the largest or smallest disparities between their home and road play.
Of active programs, these 10, in order, had the biggest disparity between their winning percentage at home and their winning percentage on the road (awesome at home, not good on the road): Normative Services, Burns, Hanna, Ten Sleep, Shoshoni, Big Piney, Rocky Mountain, Guernsey-Sunrise, Wind River and Kemmerer.
The reverse of that is the ones who played the most consistently, with the smallest disparity between winning percentages of home and road games (in order): Wyoming Indian, Rawlins, Mountain View and Wheatland (tie), Douglas, Evanston, Meeteetse, Kelly Walsh, Lander and Worland.
Out of curiosity, I ran a quick formula on my master Excel sheet (17,000-some games) and came up with some VERY rough numbers: Since 1946, home teams have won 9,169 games, lost 7,308 and tied 269, for a winning percentage of .556. (By the way, this number of about 56 percent matches up almost perfectly to the all-time home win-loss percentage in the NFL, which is 56 percent.)
If my math is correct (and math whizzes, feel free to help me out right here), this means that over the course of 100 games, about six are won because of where the game is played. That averages out to about two games per week, or about 20 games per season. When you think about it, that’s pretty significant; chances are better than not that, at least once a season, your team will either win or lose a game because of the home-field edge.
Lots of high-tech studies have been done on the effect home-field advantage has on people mentally and physically. This article will give you a taste of it. And then a couple years ago there was a big to-do about a study that came out saying officiating favors home teams.
Whatever the reason, home-field advantage does exist, at least statistically, for Wyoming high school football. Even though the advantage is small (remember, we’re only talking about a five or six percent of games where the winner and loser are affected), it’s still there.
What do you think? Are there certain teams that enjoy home-field advantage more? Do Cokeville, Star Valley and Jackson benefit at home because of their remoteness, and do they have to work harder on the road because of that, too? Do crowds sound different in different stadiums? Are there noticeable changes to a team when it sits for three hours, one-way, on a bus before a game? Or is it all just mental?
–patrick