I’ve started wondering why the phrase “Home Sweet Home” is so strongly reflected in sports. The actual physical benefits and rules advantages would appear to be minimal at best. And yet, home teams are usually favored, they win more than they lose, and betting lines include an uptick for the home team. Why should this be the case? What kind of boost does the home team really get, and couldn’t it be bottled somehow for the visitors?

One of my favorite sports quotes of all time, attributed to many but first uttered by Harry Neale, then the coach of the Vancouver Canucks, is this gem: “We can’t seem to win at home. We can’t seem to win on the road. My biggest failing as a coach is that I can’t think of any place else to play.”

Coach Neale’s team was an exception, in regard to the first part. The NBA playoffs were overwhelmingly a home team party this year. Football teams, both NFL and college, always seem to do better in their own stadiums. Hockey is the same way. And today’s baseball standings show only three teams with a better record on the road than at home (Angels, Giants, and Mariners). The fact that those three teams are all on the west coast may be a coincidence, or it may have something to do with travel and time zone changes. Or maybe the fans are just more laid back and more forgiving.

From the standpoint of the games themselves, the rule books give very little if any advantage to the home team. In baseball, the home team gets to bat last, which is certainly an edge late in a game, or in extra innings. You know for sure whether you need to play for one run or two, and only the home team can celebrate a “walk-off” home run. Baseball teams can also fill their roster with players best suited for the specific design of their stadium, which varies from city to city, or they can vary the stadium to suit the players, as a couple of teams have recently done. Hockey rules allow the home team the benefit of making the last line change during each stoppage of play, which certainly gives an edge to that team’s coach, in terms of matching up players as desired. In both of these sports, the home field/ice advantage is real, at least to some degree. Football and basketball, to the best of my knowledge, have no such built-in benefit to the franchise that is hosting the event.

So why the big discrepancy between home performance and away performance? Why, for example, were the Boston Celtics virtually unbeatable at home this spring, but about average on the road? Why are the Chicago Cubs six games under .500 away from Wrigley Field, but 23 games over .500 in the “Friendly Confines?” Let’s look at a few possible factors:

1. Sleeping in your own bed – Certainly, there is some added comfort for players to be in a place they know, with their family around. But that can also be a distraction for some, as can being all-too-familiar with the bar scene in the home town. With all of these teams staying in high-end hotels everywhere they go, it can’t be that rough, can it? Do those one-night-stands tire them out? Well, they are athletes, so they should be able to handle it.

2. Flying around the country – Sure, it can be a bit fatiguing to be on a plane for several hours, but many of these teams have their own charter jets, and I’m betting their seats are a bit more comfy than the economy cabin I travel in. And this should be a minor factor, at most, in baseball, where it could conceivably have an impact on the first game of a series, but not the second, third, and fourth. Plus, there are plenty of short flights, and perhaps bus trips, for those teams that are near each other. I can’t buy the travel fatigue theory when the NY Giants go to Philadelphia or Washington, or the Jaguars visit Tampa or Atlanta.

3. Fan support – This is probably the ingredient that they’d like us to believe is most significant. But do screaming fans really affect the performance of the players individually? Are these world-class athletes so weak mentally that they can’t motivate themselves, but instead need to be inspired by beer-soaked fans and dancing cheerleaders (both often oblivious to the action)? Players sometimes talk about blocking out the distractions, so why would they let the reaction of the audience impact their play? They are rarely if ever physically threatened by the crowd (Detroit Pistons notwithstanding), so can’t they just convince themselves that every “BOO” is a “YAY” and the screams of “DEE-FENSE” are really “OFF-FENSE”? Just this week, we heard a pro athlete say that selection to the Hall of Fame, or to an All-Star Game, is meaningless because it comes from people who never played the game. Well, the same is true of the 70,000 fans in the stadium, right? So why do their vocalizations matter?

4. The officials – Maybe this is where the real home field/court/ice advantage lies. If more NFL flags, NBA fouls, and NHL penalties are assessed on the visiting team, then that would produce a real edge for the hosts. And perhaps it’s true. We probably can’t quantify it for baseball, where variations in the strike zone are hard to measure, but the statistics should be available for the NFL, NHL, and NBA. It would be interesting to look at those, and see if there really is an imbalance there. If so … then why? It can’t be a travel issue, so it would have to be the fans. I want to dismiss the possibility that the fans can affect the performance of the athletes, but the officials? That’s another story. I think I’ll buy into this theory, at least until proven otherwise.

So, the next time your favorite team suffers a loss or two on the road, you can blame the travel and the accommodations, question the players’ mental toughness, or believe that it’s the fault of the officials. Or you can just click your heels together and say, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 11:10 am and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.