NAn 39 Posted December 4, 2013 For anyone who's interested. Just been hearing/reading about home-field advantage (HFA) more with the actual NFL playoffs approaching and may have been done before here but wanted to look at HFA specific to playoffs myself, here’s what I found. Note: these figures exclude Super Bowl as considered a neutral field, only wild card rounds through conference championship rounds included 2003 – 2012 PLAYOFFS OVERALL · Home Team won 60% of time · Away Team 40% Over these 10 seasons · 7 yrs home team won more games · 3 yrs away teams won more games · 1 yr it was even CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES · Home Team won 60% of time · Away Team 40% Over these 10 seasons · 3 yrs home team won more games · 1 yr away teams won more games · 6 yrs it was even 1993 – 2002 PLAYOFFS OVERALL · Home Team won 75% of time · Away Team 25% Over these 10 seasons · 10 yrs home team won more games · 0 yrs away teams won more games · 0 yrs it was even CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES · Home Team won 60% of time · Away Team 40% Over these 10 seasons · 3 yrs home team won more games · 1 yr away teams won more games · 6 yrs it was even 1983 – 1992 (note 83-89 only 10 teams made playoffs instead of current 12) PLAYOFFS OVERALL · Home Team won 68.7% of time · Away Team won 31.3% Over these 10 seasons · 9 yrs home team won more games · 0 yrs away teams won more games · 1 yr it was even CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES · Home Team won 70% of time · Away Team won 30% of time Over these 10 seasons · 5 yrs home team won more games · 1 yr away teams won more games · 4 yrs it was even OBSERVATIONS · Though HFA in playoffs still holds true, in last decade (parity? other?) it’s not been quite as lopsided as previous 2 decades · HFA for Championship Games (CGs) consistent last 2 decades · Significant amount of seasons over last 3 decades where teams w/HFA won more games Other observations? RETURNING TO 2003 – 2012, MOST RECENT (RELEVANT?) DECADE Assuming that most recent decade is the most relevant, I wanted to examine any specific trends so I looked closer at this decade: · 1 seed made SB 40% (NE ’11, IND ’09, NO ’09, NE ’07, CHI ’06, SEA ’05, PHI ’04, NE ’03) · 2 seed 20% (SF ’12, PIT ’10, PIT ’08, NE ’04) · 3 seed 15% (IND ’06, PIT ’05, CAR ’03) · 4 seed 15% (BAL ’12, NYG ’11, ARI ’08) · 5-6 seed (wild cards) 10% (GB ’10, NYG ’07) OBSERVATIONS · Only 40% of time did top seed in either conference make it to Super Bowl (SB) · Only 40% top seed NFC made SB · Only 40% top seed AFC made SB · Wild Card Team made SB 10% of time (GB ’10, NYG ’07) · Team from Wild Card Round (3-6 seed) made SB 40% of time · So just as likely to make SB if you play in WC round as if you have HFA throughout · Yes, top seed more likely to make SB than other seeds but not by a significant margin and definitely no lock Other observations? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites