Over in the
Michigan/Washington game thread we got into a discussion of HFA generally and HFA specifically as it relates to the new West Coast teams. I think this should be a stand-alone thread because it is ongoing not specific to this one game.
Some background:
The discussion started in that thread because
@Mdot21 pointed out that Michigan has a pretty dismal history in true road games on the West Coast. I jumped in and pointed out that this wasn't a "Michigan" thing because we all seem to then I reviewed Ohio State's dismal history in true road games on the West Coast.
The short version for Ohio State and Michigan is that those two teams (the best two in the B1G over the timeframe under consideration) are a dismal 3-10 in true road games against traditional Pac teams. It is actually worse than even that because several of the losses were blowouts in games where the two teams *SHOULD* have been reasonably evenly matched and the wins only occurred in games in which the B1G team was good enough to end up with double-digit wins AND they were playing a Pac team that was so bad that they finished below .500.
Now that we have four former Pac teams, how will this impact things? Will the traditional midwestern BigTen/Big11Ten/B1G teams continue to struggle THAT badly on the West coast or will familiarity make things less difficult? Will the Western teams similarly struggle mightily against the non-western teams?
Another part of the discussion was my recollections of a deep dive we did into HFA a few years ago. We looked at conference games only because OOC HFA is skewed by playing cupcake buy games exclusively at home. My recollection is that HFA is very much real as evidenced by every single team having a better record in home league games than in road league games. My recollection also is that HFA seemed to be biggest for the teams that are typically middling in the league.
I didn't anticipate the middling thing but it makes sense if you think about it. Looking at the
current power rankings and I'm just using
@ELA 's here because they are the most recently posted. Consider four teams:
- #1 Ohio State
- #9 Iowa
- #10 Nebraska
- #18 Purdue
HFA for Ohio State and Purdue is only plausibly likely to be decisive against maybe 3-5 opponents:
- For tOSU the next 3-5 teams or #2 PSU, #3 Ore, #4 USC, #5 Michigan, and #6 Rutgers. Ohio State doesn't play USC nor Rutgers this year so that only leaves three games in which HFA could plausibly be decisive. Ohio State should win the rest regardless of location.
- For Purdue the next 3-5 better teams or #17 UCLA, #16 NU, #15 UMD, #14 MN, and #13 UW. Purdue doesn't play UCLA, Maryland, nor Minnesota so that only leaves two games in which HFA could plausibly be decisive. Purdue should lose the rest regardless of location.
So for teams at the top and bottom HFA is only likely to be decisive in 2-3 games per year but it is different for middling teams like Iowa and Nebraska because for them HFA could be decisive in games against the next better 3-5 teams AND the next worse 3-5 teams so for them:
- each other
- #8 Illinois
- #7 Indiana
- #6 Rutgers
- #5 Michigan
- #4 USC
- #11 Washington
- #12 MSU
- #13 UW
- #14 Minnesota
- #15 Maryland
That is most of the league so HFA could plausibly be decisive in the bulk of their games.
Will the Western teams have a substantially bigger differential between Home and Away winning percentage than the others?
