Deck Knight
Blast Off At The Speed Of Light! That's Right!
One of the intricacies of sports that always fascinated me was the concept of the Home Field Advantage. The theory being that playing in your own arena was inherently advantageous to your team, thus why sportscasters constantly talk about home game vs. road game performance.
This concept makes perfect sense to me in Baseball. In Baseball every team's stadium is different, the home team gets the last at bat, you play by the home team's league rules, etc. There are obvious and incredible advantages to being the home team in Baseball.
This makes less sense to me as a metric in sports with more standardized arenas and rules. Short of very minute differences on wear and tear, basketball courts, soccer fields, and football fields are all the same. Aside from the psychological edge of defending your own ground in your own house, I don't see enough concrete advantages to make home and road significantly different statistics.
Do you have any insight on this? Is there something I missed? How much does Home Field Advantage really factor in?
This concept makes perfect sense to me in Baseball. In Baseball every team's stadium is different, the home team gets the last at bat, you play by the home team's league rules, etc. There are obvious and incredible advantages to being the home team in Baseball.
This makes less sense to me as a metric in sports with more standardized arenas and rules. Short of very minute differences on wear and tear, basketball courts, soccer fields, and football fields are all the same. Aside from the psychological edge of defending your own ground in your own house, I don't see enough concrete advantages to make home and road significantly different statistics.
Do you have any insight on this? Is there something I missed? How much does Home Field Advantage really factor in?