HOME FIELD ADVANTAGE?

I have gotten many requests to do a blog to explain how I compute each teams home field edge in the magazine. I have 27 different factors in my computer’s grade of a team. I then compare the computer’s analysis to my own and make the final decision.

While I mention that there are 27 factors in my home field computer ratings, there are actually nine individual factors that I use each year and I then combine the grades for the last three years giving half of the grade to last year, 30% to the numbers from two years ago and 20% to the computer rankings from three years ago.

Today I will go over the nine different areas that I use to rate home field edge. The first category is the stadium capacity. The largest stadium in the country last year was Michigan which held 109,901 and my computer gave them the maximum score of 6 for that category. My home field edges go from 0 to 6 in the magazine so they have the same scale in the computer. The smallest capacity is Idaho’s Kibbie Dome which seated just 16,000 and they received a 0 in that category. The rest of the capacities are done with a simple equation of Capacity-16,000 divided by 15,650. The reason I divide by 15,650 is that Michigan at 109,901-16,000 = 93,901 and 93,901 divided by 6 (0-6 scale) = 15,650. You can figure out what your favorite team is graded in this category by using this simple equation.

The second category is actual attendance reported by the school in 2011. Once again Michigan was at the top with 112,179 and this time the team at the bottom was Eastern Michigan which averaged just 4,267 fans per game last year. I used the same method as above to turn this data into a 0 to 6 rating where Michigan received a 6, Eastern Michigan a 0 and as an example Florida St with an avg attendance of 77,842 earned a 4.33 grade.

http://philsteele.com/Blogs/2012/Aug12/DBAug4.html