By Alex Wojcik '23
Introduction
College Football Playoff, NIL deals, conference realignment, oh my!
The landscape of college football has changed dramatically in recent years. While many student-athletes have cashed in on name, image and likeness deals this season, schools themselves have pursued greater paydays by shifting between athletic conferences. In 2014, Maryland and Rutgers joined the Big Ten, introducing the DC and New York media markets to the largely midwestern conference. By 2025, Oklahoma and Texas will enter the Southeastern Conference in time for the SEC’s new $3 billion media agreement with ESPN. To replace the institutions, the Big 12 will add BYU, UCF, Cincinnati, and Houston, stretching the conference over metros in three time zones from Orlando to Provo.
These recent organizational changes stress two realities in modern college football. First, playing in more nationalized conferences, travel will likely increase. Even if intra-conference divisions are created, the Big 12 could easily schedule trips from Florida to Kansas that span over 1000 miles.
Second, money is king. The College Football Playoff currently pays out $6 million to conferences for each Playoff semi-finalist they have. Therefore, conferences want as many schools in the Playoff as they can. Even if the College Football Playoff is expanded, the format’s demand for near-perfection is here to stay, and conferences remain incentivized to produce clearly dominant teams rather than parity.
But does greater travel make perfection more difficult? Other sports including soccer have exhibited more significant home field advantages in domestic leagues where travel is greatest. With a more significant home field advantage, teams are more likely to split their schedules, winning at home and losing on the road. In this paper, I investigate how distance traveled impacts home field advantage in college football. Using data of game records, I find that travel’s impact on point differential among FBS teams is statistically significant but has been less pronounced in recent years.
Methodology
To conduct this study, I scraped data from Sports-Reference.com on college football game results between FBS teams (as of 2016) from the FBS’s inception in 1978 to 2021. I removed neutral games and compared the difference in scores, or point differential, to the difference in distance between both schools. That way, I am able to see if the distance traveled has any impact on the results of college football games.
Point differential is expressed in terms of the away team, meaning a negative point differential indicates a home field advantage. To calculate the difference in distance, I used the sf package in R to determine the Euclidean distance between the coordinates of each team’s stadium, estimating how far the road team traveled from campus to campus. A bus trip winding roads may incur more mileage than a direct flight that Euclidean distance does not account for, but any difference should be small.
Results
After plotting each game and running a regression, I arrived at the equation y = -4.60 -0.0013 * x. With a negative y-intercept and a negative slope, a home field advantage in college football is clear. The negative slope suggests there is a slight increase in home field advantage when the visiting team travels farther. The regression’s p-value below 0.01 may indicate strong statistical significance of this relationship. The regression also has a low R2 value, but this value may be attributable to the great variance in point differential due to other factors. Therefore, it is certainly possible for a well-traveled away team to win, but they are more likely to have a harder time.
Next, I calculated average point differentials based on certain intervals of distance traveled. With greater distance traveled, the difference in average point differentials can be as much as a field goal.
Finally, I compared the earlier data to that seen since the BCS selection system started in 1998. There appears to be a range of about a single point. This change in relationship would suggest that home field advantage increases only slightly if the opponent has traveled farther and that the advantage has become less significant in recent years. However, the regression may be less conclusive. With an equation of y = -5.24 - 0.007x, a p-value of 0.06, and an even lower R2, more seasons of data would be needed to confirm the change in the impact of increased travel.
Conclusion
If away teams are at a greater disadvantage when they travel farther, as the data suggests, it may be harder for undefeated or near-perfect teams to emerge from geographically expansive college football conferences. As long as the College Football Playoff’s payouts are structured to benefit the conferences of the tournament’s participants, conferences and schools alike should be wary about forming mega-conferences that require extensive travel for away games because its schedule may make it harder for anyone to achieve an undefeated or one-loss season.
Of course, the College Football Playoff selection committee could take into account the perceived strengths of opponents when playing in ultra-competitive conferences like an improved SEC. However, if the committee relies on more basic measures of Strength of Schedule which consider comparisons of opponent records, a stronger conference with more parity may paint middling teams as weaker then they would be somewhere else. For example, a 6-6 SEC team may in fact be better than a 6-6 squad in the AAC. But if the SEC grows the number of teams in their conference and they play fewer non-conference games, there would be less of a chance to improve the Strength of Schedule of the conference’s best. Under this scenario, a 10-2 SEC team’s Strength of Schedule would adjust against the 6-6 team, not against one that’s 7-5 or 8-4 with more non-conference wins.
However, if more recent data since 1998 indicates a trend, the increase in home field advantage with greater away team travel may be waning. FBS programs may be adapting to travel with private planes and new technology, limiting the negative impacts of long-distance travel. With a lessened impact, schools could more freely travel long distances to cash in on more lucrative conference TV contracts without risking participation in the College Football Playoff. All would add to the resources available to more effectively combat discomfort to play in unfamiliar environments. As recently announced conference realignments come to fruition, we can look to confirm this trend with more data.
Participation in the College Football Playoff brings in more money, but there may be other financial incentives to playing in more competitive conferences. Better talent in conference games is an attractive TV product, which could increase viewership and potential sponsorship interest. If a team is more likely to win at home, demand for game day tickets may increase. Also, greater travel within geographically expansive athletic conferences skips over small college towns in favor of large urban media markets. If money is truly the athletic programs’ top priority, administrators may find that other financial benefits outweigh a tougher road to the College Football Playoff.