Home Field Advantage.
It’s a credential that holds strong merit in sports. Especially in football.
No long bus rides, no lightly filled visitor stands. Instead, athletes may get to go home after school, get a meal and head to a stadium filled with anxious fans awaiting a victory from their local school.
Well rested, well fed, and a crowd in their favor.
That should lead to an advantage right?
Well…no.
At least, not this season.
So far, home teams have not been favored any better than the away teams.
The evidence?
First, let’s take a look at the margin of victory, and set some parameters. Games between 11AA-11AAA teams are going to be set to a maximum margin of victory (for now called “MOV”) of 40 points. For games between 11A-9B, games were set to a maximum MOV of 50 points.
50 is the mercy rule in those smaller classes, and 40 is near one standard deviation of MOV for those bigger classes.
When we look at the numbers, here is what we find…
Home MOV:
11-Man: -0.78
9-Man: 0.77
Now, that’s interesting. It seems as though home teams win about half the time. Basically a toss up when you look at the numbers.
So how about we check out the winning percentage in close games? Maybe the home team doesn’t vastly take victory over their visitors, but that home field advantage has got to count for something right?
Here is the winning % this season in games decided on by 1 score (8 points) or less:
Home Winning % (Close Games):
11-Man: 43.75%
9-Man: 47.62%
Well now THAT is interesting. Home teams have not won the close games.
But, I want to add in one factor.
Maybe all of this is because of the 2-year scheduling cycle, where teams switch home and away from last season? Maybe the better teams are just playing the tough games on the road this year?
That could account for some differences.
Okay, we may be on to something, let’s check Home MOV in the regular season and compare it to last season. Same Parameters.
| HOME MOV | ||
| Class/Year | 2022 | 2023 |
| 11-Man | -0.78 | 3.61 |
| 9-Man | 0.77 | 2.42 |
Nice, okay. We might be able to attribute some of it to the scheduling cycle. Since teams that were away last season are home in the same matchups.
Maybe that could also be affected by strong classes graduating and whatnot.
But there is some difference, so let’s make note of that.
Now again, let’s check out close home games.
| HOME WIN. % (Close Games) | ||
| Class/Year | 2023 | 2022 |
| 11-Man | 43.75% | 40.00% |
| 9-Man | 47.62% | 58.00% |
This looks really interesting. Might this large jump in win percentage for 9-man be attributed to the scheduling cycle?
Possibly.
In 2022, the home team pulled an upset in a close game seven times. Interestingly, the away team pulled off the upset just twice.
Okay, now we’re on to something!
The two teams that won an upset on the road were North Central (#59) over Northwestern (#56) and Viborg-Hurley (#22) over Canistota (#15).
Canistota actually lost three close games at home, but were not favored to win in two of them.
Now for this season, home teams have pulled off just one close upset:
- Stanley County over De Smet
As for the visitors, they have pulled off four close upsets:
- Lyman over Kadoka Area
- Jones County over New Underwood
- Corsica-Stickney over F/M/FA
- Bon Homme over Stanley County
So more home teams pulled off upsets in 2022, but visiting teams pulled more upsets off so far in 2023.
In total between the two seasons, here are your number of close upsets in 9-Man:
- Home: 8
- Visitors: 6
But don’t be so fast to come to the conclusion on this mystery. Instead, we should be asking, WHAT COULD IT MEAN?
I’ll answer that one:
Randomness.
Let’s take a look at some overall numbers.
| Year/Class | # of Close Games | Home Upsets | Away Upsets |
| 11-Man 2022 | 44 | 6 | 11 |
| 11-Man 2023 | 32 | 1 | 6 |
| 9-Man 2022 | 32 | 7 | 2 |
| 9-Man 2023 | 20 | 1 | 4 |
| 11-Man Totals: | 76 | 7 | 17 |
| 9-Man Totals: | 52 | 8 | 6 |
| OVR TOTALS: | 128 | 15 | 23 |
Well, when we look at it this way, we just see a big ole mess.
That’s because it is.
That’s what randomness looks like.
There isn’t any consistency when you look at the numbers at the big picture level, because overall, there isn’t any consistency.
You could say that the 11-Man totals stick out, but 2022 had a significant amount of close games. If you have a lot more close games, that leads to the possibility of a lot more variance.
And maybe we go through more years and data later when we have them (more on that) and it turns out to be the same. Then we might even dare to say that home teams are at a DISADVANTAGE in 11-Man.
But I don’t think that’s the case and here is why…
Referees.
There is a great article on it here, but basically, players don’t really perform better at home. I highly suggest reading the book, Scorecasting. It’s written by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim, and they break down this phenomenon.
There are also interesting facts. Like the fact that’s because refs tend to call more fouls on road teams.
And in soccer, they tend to give more extra time when the home team is losing.
This can really be chalked up to one thing:
Refs are human.
When a large crowd is ready to yell at you at a moment’s notice, humans don’t like it.
At all.
So in professional and collegiate sports, we have big crowds that intimidate the referees to the point they change the way they call the game. Teams then get home field advantage.
We don’t see that in high school football. Maybe the crowds are less intimidating to refs? Refs are tougher? Could be a possibility.
But what else does that mean about the high school football ref in South Dakota that you hate?
Yeah, the one who just made a call that went against your team.
He or she probably doesn’t have a bias. Or at least, not anything that can really be noticed.
So wait TK, final question. Why do home teams win more in the playoffs? That’s got to be an advantage right?!
Well, playing at home typically represents a reward of excellence after a dominant regular season.
The home team typically has won more games because they were better and have the SPA (Seed Point Average) that generally reflects their skill. The better team usually wins, and the better team is usually at home.
In fact, the better team only lost twice last year in the 11-Man playoffs…
Both of them lost at home.
Overall, this was a fun article that gives us a hint of the advantages or disadvantages of being at home.
But to find the final answer, we are going to need more data. Which means we are going to have to look at other seasons. I guess this is the first time that I’m announcing it publically, but good news.
I am working on a South Dakota scores project.
My goal is to catalog and rank teams from South Dakota’s past. That’s right, a ranking using our algorithm for previous years and just a general database of games so that way people can look up interesting things like overall record, streaks & rivalry history.
Anyway, I’ll be working on that after football, but if you know your school/team has old results, please send them my way at DigitalZSports@gmail.com.
My plan is to have this entirely free to the public, so please send it over!
Also, if you like this article, please be sure to subscribe. You are going to get articles like this, plus a ton more in both high school and college news and numbers. It goes a long way to supporting the content you like, and every subscription goes right back into coverage of your favorite teams.
Thank you so much, and have a wonderful weekend.
-TK