Freakonomics: The source of home-field advantage (and Iowa referees)
Freakonomics just did a great bit on the true source of home-field advantage (http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/12/18/football-freakonomics-how-advantageous-is-home-field-advantage-and-why/)
To make a long story short -- the biggest source of variation (home vs. away team) comes from refs who are influenced by the crowd noise. The louder the stadium, the more the bias. This made me think back to a bunch of no-calls at the end of the Iowa game, it seems like Kinnick's advantage may have been that the refs didn't want to upset a screaming crowd that is almost right on top of them (I've heard that the seats are closer to the field than in most stadiums)
December 18th, 2011 at 11:31 AM ^
Of why the blue hairs can suck it.
December 18th, 2011 at 6:00 PM ^
December 18th, 2011 at 6:35 PM ^
Just a thought, but the rest of the stadium is allowed to make noise too, and perhaps not be lazy, whiny bums. At least that's what I heard.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:33 AM ^
It sure didn't help the snow job Toussaint TD reversal against Ohio.
December 18th, 2011 at 2:11 PM ^
I suspect that the home crowd has less of an influence on official reviews, since the call isn't made while the ref and the crowd are both "in the moment"
also, in college, the review officials are not the guys on the field
December 19th, 2011 at 10:09 AM ^
That's an interesting thought, actually, particularly since the guy on the field called a TD.
December 19th, 2011 at 11:45 AM ^
That was one of the studies referenced in the SI article last winter: replay reviews tend to favor the visiting team, which was seen (I think correctly) as confirming that on-field officials tend to err in favor of the home side.
December 19th, 2011 at 1:16 AM ^
Exactly what I was thinking at the time out said snow job. "You're doing this to a HOME team? Are you trying to get KILLED?!?!"
December 18th, 2011 at 11:34 AM ^
I 100% agree with their assessment. I believe that referee's are greatly influenced by the crowd for the simple reason that most humans would rather be cheered than boo'd and when calls are close (a-la the end of the Iowa game) refs have a built in (and involuntary) bias to make the calls that will elicit the most support. The key thing in the Freakonomics article for me anyways was that it's involuntary which is why all refs deny it exists. Even when shown data (thank you Mark Cuban) that demonstrates that the same refs calling the same two teams make radically different calls depending on if the game is home or away.
December 19th, 2011 at 1:11 AM ^
Then organizations really need to do a better job finding people with abnormally high immunity to caring about that stuff.
Like so many other things, refs are an old boy network. Every sport, it's the same faces out there year after year, which indicates there is not a lot in the way of evaluations and accountability.
December 19th, 2011 at 8:55 AM ^
I have to disagree on the ground that the world doesn't need more sociopaths.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:37 AM ^
I can't remember where, but I've read an article that shows the strongest correlation to distance of travel. It claimed that crowd noise was heavily overrated. Econometrics is fun.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:59 AM ^
scorecasting came to the same conclusion as freakonomics, finding that distance travelled was a negligible factor.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:39 AM ^
I'm sure the 114,000 at the BIg House have some effect on the refs at our place so I'm not going to ever complain about home field advantage and the refs. We shouldn't have been in that position with Iowa in the first place
Also, is that Brian at the 1:56 mark of the video at the bottom?
December 18th, 2011 at 11:40 AM ^
I went to the Iowa game and was underwhelmed by the crowd noise factor. In general, it did not live up to the Kinnick hype I had always heard. But... on the final set of downs, it was pretty nuts and I remember thinking on the 4th down play, "well... ain't no one calling PI right now," as the whole Iowa sideline swept out onto the field and I could not even spot a referee to see what their reaction might be. It felt like no one would have even noticed if a flag was thrown, it all happened so fast.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:45 AM ^
As a soccer referee, I would be lying if I said that the crowd or coaches never had an effect on how I called games.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:52 AM ^
I agree with this assessment - I think that, from a simply human standpoint, we'd rather be praised than booed or, as is the case in some stadiums, threatened. I can't imagine that it doesn't affect, to some degree, how games are called.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:47 AM ^
I call bullshit. The Freakonomics guys are pop scientists.
The book "Soccernomics" is the biggest piece of garbage I've ever read.
Someone needs to teach Freakonomics about causation vs correlation.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:52 AM ^
I'm sure Steven Levitt knows the difference. The problem is Dubner pretty much took over after the book's huge success. Levitt is still a respected, working economist, while Dubner runs the money machine even though he's just a journalist.
December 18th, 2011 at 3:29 PM ^
Andrew Gelman and Kaiser Fung recently went into a little more detail on the nature of Freakonomics's failings:
http://andrewgelman.com/2011/12/freakonomics-what-went-wrong/
December 18th, 2011 at 12:01 PM ^
yeah, those harvard and MIT grads who became university of chicago professors of economics sure are stupid.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:10 PM ^
I didnt say they were stupid. They are clearly intelligent, and have made a ton of money.
But they assert that there is a CAUSATION between GDP and a country's ability to play soccer. Which is stupid. But it is a great way to sell a book.
They are pop scientists, they take an interesting correlation and turn it into an unfounded conclusion with little evidence. And the common man doesn't understand enough about science to call them on their bullshit so they buy their book and call them super smart.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:20 PM ^
at least someone has perspective here. Freakonomics is the worst book I have EVER read. Nothing is supported by doing any sound study of any kind. I could write a better books than these hacks. As a social scientist I can tell you that all they are doing is forming a story around a correlation. At the very least they could looks at spurious variables, or if they looked at stadium noise in decibels with penalties it would solidify what they are saying.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:50 PM ^
I have to agree freakonomics was trash, every single one of their arguments had gigantic holes in it. While yes you could word things to show how there might be a connection you could litterally do that with anything in statistics, for example the economy has been dropping since newspapers began to fail, maybe it is actually a lack of quality newspapers that is causing the recession, there i just did what freakonomics did, its trash for people who don't undersand economics and stats but want to feel smart, i.e. most of the country
December 18th, 2011 at 12:58 PM ^
There exists a correlation between ice cream consumption and violence, but that doesn't make me right to claim it and ignore the fact that that people consume ice cream during the summer when people spend more time outside with each other thereby increasing the probability of violence to occur.
Similarly, there is a correlation with the number of churches in an area with crime, but to ignore the fact that there are more churches per square mile in cities/urban areas with a higher population density would be stupid.
December 18th, 2011 at 2:27 PM ^
Just look at the 3rd item under mgo.liciou.us that Brian posted. It links to the following graphic which "proves" that Facebook usage caused the Greek debt crisis:
http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/etc_correlation50__01__960.jpg
December 18th, 2011 at 1:21 PM ^
What are they saying about GDP and soccer? If a higher GDP is correlated with success, how does that explain Brazil's dominance?
December 18th, 2011 at 11:51 AM ^
The blue hair meme is silly. You too will be a screaming blue hair some day.
When I was an older graduate student and had student tickets, the frat boys that sat near me stood the whole game, but paid little attention to the game. When the Ohio game came at the end of the season the whole section of frat boys sold their tickets to Ohio fans. I had a pleasant conversation with the who sat next to me during the game while a drunken Michigan fan waved his middle finger in the air and yelled obscenities to the OSU Marching band.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:30 PM ^
MAKE SOME NOISE!!!!
Enough with the "pleasant conversatons during the game"...
December 19th, 2011 at 1:13 AM ^
"Screaming blue hair" is an oxymoron, which is exactly the point for us blue hair haters.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:03 PM ^
Yeah the seats are REALLY close to the field. There was a small aisle between the front row and the sideline benches, and that was it. Sideline was so narrow that the guys next to me were talking with the end guy on the kickoff team for Iowa.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:14 PM ^
Sports illustrated ran an article claiming essentially the same thing about a year ago. That the size of the crowd influences referees decisions and that that is the only homefield advantage that exists.
December 18th, 2011 at 11:42 PM ^
...but offered absolutely no evidence for the second.
They were pretty convincing on the first claim--one interesting study was a long-term study of extra time in Spanish soccer matches showing a signifiicant (and strongly so) tendency for referees to allow more extra time at the end of matches if the home team was one goal behind and less extra time if the home team was one goal ahead. Two-goal differences or more were neutral.
They also pointed out the higher frequence of success for visiting team's replay reviews in football, which would imply that the on field officials erred more often in the home team's favor.
But I don't recall the slightest attempt to back up their claim that they'd successfully explained 100% of the advantage.
December 19th, 2011 at 2:00 PM ^
I thought the study they cited about having officials watch plays on a monitor with and without volume was pretty convincing. I believe it was basketball but without volume they found there was no bias. But with volume, they found a bias toward the home team as the crowds reaction to a play became a factor.
December 19th, 2011 at 2:56 PM ^
There was an SI article long ago, in another context, showing that home court advantage in the NBA varied by official. They didn't do the analysis but as I recall the variance was statistically significant. At the time they seemed to want to imply that the favoritism was deliberate; I think a better explanation would be varying degrees of susceptibility to crowds.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:45 PM ^
I saw this in SI ealier in the year. Makes sense.
( as noted)
December 18th, 2011 at 12:57 PM ^
i think i also read where the distance between the refs and crowd plays a role-which is why basketball calls tend to skew to the home team. there is basically no separation between the crowd and the officials. the proximity in hockey is mitigated by the boards and the glass.
December 18th, 2011 at 9:13 PM ^
Not all refs are adversely affected. Back in the day some sharp NBA bettors used to track the movements of Earl Strom. If he showed up at an arena money would be wagered on the road team. Some sharps estimated he was worth a full bucket off the home court advantage.
The effect was real, but it wasn't a full bucket. The NBA HCA began dropping right around the time the league went to three refs.
December 18th, 2011 at 12:58 PM ^
Maybe I"m stating the obvious here but crowd noise does make a significant difference in football quite aside from the officials' decisions; a team with a relatively intelligent fan base will make a lot of noise when the team's on defense. Even if this doesn't cause false starts themselves, the offense might not get as good of a jump off the snap. Since the defense goes on ball movement mostly, it doesn't affect them as much. I wouldn't want to be driving down the field right in front of the M student section in the fourth quarter if I were the opposing offense, much less in louder stadiums like the Swamp.
December 19th, 2011 at 6:01 PM ^
If a team with a relatively intelligent fanbase will make a lot of noise on defense, how does that explain West Virginia and Ohio?
December 18th, 2011 at 1:14 PM ^
Isn't this obvious? I mean does anyone really think officials can just block 100 percent of that out?
December 18th, 2011 at 2:52 PM ^
refs wear earplugs, or something that softened noice, whether the home field advantage might even out. If you think about the numerous advantages that the bigger and wealthier schools already enjoy. . .
December 18th, 2011 at 5:44 PM ^
whether this is true or not i do not know.
the immaculate (sp?) reception was actually an incompletion. when you watch the highlight of franco harris "catching" the ball on this play, the camera does not give a full shot of the actuall "catch." apparently the refs went to the sideline and called to see how much security is available for them (the refs). the security official on the other end of the line asked why the ref was asking such a question. the ref responded by saying that the deflected pass that franco "caught" had actually touched the ground and was therefore incomplete. the refs knew that if they made the "correct" call they would have been tarred and feathered by the three rivers faithful. the security official told the refs that they could not provide additional security for them. thus the refs called the "catch" complete and the steelers won the game against the raiders.
home field won the steelers that game and propelled them to the super bowl.
December 18th, 2011 at 6:51 PM ^
I don't think you have the facts straight. The problem was if the ball bounced off the intended receiver and not the defensive player it should have been incomplete based on a rule that was later rescinded so it would not matter today. It used to be that a the ball couldn't touch only an offensive player then be caught by a different offensive player which is a pretty strange rule.
December 18th, 2011 at 6:59 PM ^
it is not off topic because it illustrates how "home field advantage" influences the refs. the pass from bradshaw was tipped by his intended receiver and deflect off of a raiders db or lb before harris "caught" the ball. watch the play and you will never be able to see if the ball actually touched the ground.
December 18th, 2011 at 9:50 PM ^
In Bo: Life, laughs, and lessonsof a college football legend , our legandary coach recounts how, as an assistant at Presbytarian College this happened to his team. They were on the Wofford 1-yard line, with only time for one play. A sneak seemed to have made it in, winning the game. While the ref was sorting thru the pile, the students piled on the edges of the field chanting "terrier meat, terrier meat" (Wofford being The Terriers, you see.) As Bo recounted, the ref was visibly shaken and placed the ball on the inch-line, no touchdown, clock expired, Wofford wins.
If Bo acknowledges that this happens, then it certainly happens.