College Football: Saturday Night Game Advantage Is Overstated

"The point is – a #8-ranked Texas A&M team at Kyle Field in a 2:30 game sounds 1000x better than 85,000 white towels whipping in the thick central Texas air at 7:30 as the sun sets over Olsen Field. At 2:30, you can minimize the crowd (as much as A&M’s crowd can be minimized), especially since the temperature will be a soul-sucking 95 degrees when the teams take the field. As a visiting team you can kind of use that to your advantage. Score a couple early in the first, keep the crowd at bay, and hold on for dear life in the second half."

Does the home team in these Saturday night college affairs have a larger home field advantage, as the crowd is whipped into a frenzy by, ummm, participating in festivities for a full day?

Based on 2010, the answer would appear to be “No.” We may have selective memories of upsets on Saturday Night, such as Wisconsin over Ohio State, or Texas A&M and Missouri over Oklahoma, but the home team does not have a larger advantage than normal. In fact, home teams have underperformed against the spread.

In the ABC Saturday Night telecasts, the home team went 10-10 last year, and 6-14 against the spread in 2010. If we expand it out to all games involving two BCS teams on a Saturday night, to pick up the ESPN and FOX broadcasts, then the home team in those games went 52-48, 47-53 against the spread.

Add both those together, and you get a combined home record on Saturday nights in BCS games of 62-58, but only 53-67 (44%) against the spread. If anything, the public overvalues the impact of playing at night.

Here were the records for the home team in 2010, by conference affiliation, when the game was played at night:

ACC: 6-7 (4-9 ATS)

Big East: 6-6 (6-6 ATS)

Big Ten: 4-2 (3-3 ATS)

Big XII: 13-12 (12-13 ATS)

Pac-10: 18-15 (16-17 ATS)

SEC: 14-16 (12-18 ATS)

[photo via Getty]