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The road can be unkind, as the University of Denver men's basketball team knows all too well.
The Pioneers finished 11-3 at home this season, winning seven of nine against their Sun Belt Conference foes. In opponents' gyms, however, they went just 2-12. And the first of those victories, in late February, snapped a 43-game road losing streak dating to 2006.
Joe Scott, Denver's head coach, tells his young team that toughness wins road games. "Home teams are always more aggressive," he says. "There's always some element that keeps them fighting."
It's the well-known law of home-court advantage, the edge that sports teams seem to gain when they play in their own arenas. Exactly why it happens, though, is a long-enduring mystery.
Fans who paint their faces, taunt their opponents, and scream their throats raw may think the answer is simple. More-refined observers — sociologists, psychologists, and statisticians — have proposed all kinds of scientific explanations. Several decades of research suggest that home-court advantage is real, but complex.
A team's home-and-away record in a given year is not the whole story, says Byron J. Gajewski, an associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Kansas Schools of Medicine and Nursing.
In a recent published study, he challenged the conventional wisdom that playing at home gives college football teams a three-point advantage. Using longitudinal data from 1996 to 2004, he created a statistical model that estimated the "team ability" of each Big 12 squad over time. That, he says, allowed him to simulate each team playing a statistical clone of itself at home. Adjusting for strength of schedule, he then isolated each team's "true home-field advantage."
The big winner was the University of Nebraska, with a 9.89-point edge. That is, the model predicted that a visiting team would trail the Cornhuskers by a touchdown and field goal before kickoff. Alas, Baylor University got zero edge in its stadium. "Home-field advantage isn't created equal," says Mr. Gajewski.
The phenomenon may have deep psychological explanations. A while back, Philip E. Varca compared the performances of home and visiting teams in men's college basketball games. In his sample, he found little difference when he looked at measures of fine motor skills: The visiting teams had basically the same field-goal and free-throw shooting percentages as the home teams.
But there were statistically significant gaps in three categories that involve strength and full-body movements: blocked shots, rebounds, and steals. The home team had more of each; meanwhile, the visitors committed more fouls.
Crowds, Mr. Varca concluded, whip both teams into heightened states of aggression: One is "functional" and the other is "dysfunctional." "The home team didn't necessarily perform better with the ball, but they had the ball more often," says Mr. Varca, an associate professor in the department of management and marketing at the University of Wyoming. "Something about the audience facilitates this aggressive energy."
Home-field advantage is most pronounced in college basketball, where men's road teams win about one of every three games. The noise and emotions in the relatively small venues may trigger a kind of territoriality in home teams' athletes. Mr. Varca likens it to an angry male bass defending its nest: "If you come in there, he's going to beat your ass."
Another kind of antisocial behavior was the basis of "Spectator Booing and the Home Advantage: A Study of Social Influence in the Basketball Arena," a 1983 article in Social Psychology Quarterly. Researchers found that "sustained spectator protest" preceded increases in fouls by visiting teams. During five-minute "postbooing periods," the visiting team's overall performance also dipped.
Perhaps decorum is for losers. After all, crowds might also help their teams by screaming at the most inevitable scapegoats in sports — the ones who wear whistles.
A 2007 study at Florida State University suggested that referees may subconsciously bend to the will of the crowd as a way of coping with stress. The researchers asked two groups of participants to call videotaped soccer games. Those who watched the games with sound reported more anxiety and called 21 percent fewer fouls on the home team than did those who could not hear the roar of spectators.
"If you see what might be a foul and you hear the crowd, it can affect you," says Ryan Boyko, a graduate student at the University of California at Davis who has refereed intercollegiate soccer games for 10 years. Recently he published a study that examined some 5,000 English soccer matches. He found that teams scored an average of 1.5 goals at home and 1.1 away. For every 10,000 fans, the home team's advantage rose by a tenth of a goal. Meanwhile, visiting teams received more penalties, which Mr. Boyko attributes to "officiating bias": Less-experienced refs called more fouls on the visitors.
Home-field advantage also seems to have a flip side. Several studies have explored the reasons why teams sometimes choke at home (Hint: the expectations of all those friends, moms, and sweethearts in the stands can crush you).
Games without spectators at all are hard to imagine, but not for Steven McCoy. In 1989 he was the center for Siena College's famous "quarantined" hoops team, which played its final nine games in empty arenas following a measles outbreak on the campus. Mr. McCoy's team went 8-1. "It was pure and simple," he says. "It was 'throw the ball up and play,' with no expectations of making the fans happy."
Richard H. Cox, a sports psychologist at the University of Missouri at Columbia, suggests that one can overthink all this. "Teams do get the reputation of being good or bad road teams," he wrote in an e-mail message, "but generally speaking, the best teams are going to win home or away."
Charles (Lefty) Driesell agrees. A retired men's basketball coach who notched a career record of 786-394 at the University of Maryland and three other colleges, Mr. Driesell recalls fans distracting his players now and again. But he attributes the difficulty of winning on the road to the hardships of travel and the visitors' unfamiliarity with their surroundings — not to raucous fans.
So what about all the coaches who thank the home crowd after a big victory? "They're just saying that so the fans will come back the next game," Mr. Driesell says. "They want them to come back and fill the place up so they can get a raise."
Even so, many coaches believe in home-court advantage and often simulate loud, hostile environments during practices. "It's a belief system," says Leonard Zaichkowsky, a sports psychologist at Boston University. "If you think there's a home-court advantage, there will be."
And so perhaps how — or how much — fans actually help their favorite teams win is a mystery nobody really wants to solve.
The road can be unkind, as the University of Denver men's basketball team knows all too well.
The Pioneers finished 11-3 at home this season, winning seven of nine against their Sun Belt Conference foes. In opponents' gyms, however, they went just 2-12. And the first of those victories, in late February, snapped a 43-game road losing streak dating to 2006.
Joe Scott, Denver's head coach, tells his young team that toughness wins road games. "Home teams are always more aggressive," he says. "There's always some element that keeps them fighting."
It's the well-known law of home-court advantage, the edge that sports teams seem to gain when they play in their own arenas. Exactly why it happens, though, is a long-enduring mystery.
Fans who paint their faces, taunt their opponents, and scream their throats raw may think the answer is simple. More-refined observers — sociologists, psychologists, and statisticians — have proposed all kinds of scientific explanations. Several decades of research suggest that home-court advantage is real, but complex.
A team's home-and-away record in a given year is not the whole story, says Byron J. Gajewski, an associate professor of biostatistics at the University of Kansas Schools of Medicine and Nursing.
In a recent published study, he challenged the conventional wisdom that playing at home gives college football teams a three-point advantage. Using longitudinal data from 1996 to 2004, he created a statistical model that estimated the "team ability" of each Big 12 squad over time. That, he says, allowed him to simulate each team playing a statistical clone of itself at home. Adjusting for strength of schedule, he then isolated each team's "true home-field advantage."
The big winner was the University of Nebraska, with a 9.89-point edge. That is, the model predicted that a visiting team would trail the Cornhuskers by a touchdown and field goal before kickoff. Alas, Baylor University got zero edge in its stadium. "Home-field advantage isn't created equal," says Mr. Gajewski.
The phenomenon may have deep psychological explanations. A while back, Philip E. Varca compared the performances of home and visiting teams in men's college basketball games. In his sample, he found little difference when he looked at measures of fine motor skills: The visiting teams had basically the same field-goal and free-throw shooting percentages as the home teams.
But there were statistically significant gaps in three categories that involve strength and full-body movements: blocked shots, rebounds, and steals. The home team had more of each; meanwhile, the visitors committed more fouls.
Crowds, Mr. Varca concluded, whip both teams into heightened states of aggression: One is "functional" and the other is "dysfunctional." "The home team didn't necessarily perform better with the ball, but they had the ball more often," says Mr. Varca, an associate professor in the department of management and marketing at the University of Wyoming. "Something about the audience facilitates this aggressive energy."
Home-field advantage is most pronounced in college basketball, where men's road teams win about one of every three games. The noise and emotions in the relatively small venues may trigger a kind of territoriality in home teams' athletes. Mr. Varca likens it to an angry male bass defending its nest: "If you come in there, he's going to beat your ass."
Another kind of antisocial behavior was the basis of "Spectator Booing and the Home Advantage: A Study of Social Influence in the Basketball Arena," a 1983 article in Social Psychology Quarterly. Researchers found that "sustained spectator protest" preceded increases in fouls by visiting teams. During five-minute "postbooing periods," the visiting team's overall performance also dipped.
Perhaps decorum is for losers. After all, crowds might also help their teams by screaming at the most inevitable scapegoats in sports — the ones who wear whistles.
A 2007 study at Florida State University suggested that referees may subconsciously bend to the will of the crowd as a way of coping with stress. The researchers asked two groups of participants to call videotaped soccer games. Those who watched the games with sound reported more anxiety and called 21 percent fewer fouls on the home team than did those who could not hear the roar of spectators.
"If you see what might be a foul and you hear the crowd, it can affect you," says Ryan Boyko, a graduate student at the University of California at Davis who has refereed intercollegiate soccer games for 10 years. Recently he published a study that examined some 5,000 English soccer matches. He found that teams scored an average of 1.5 goals at home and 1.1 away. For every 10,000 fans, the home team's advantage rose by a tenth of a goal. Meanwhile, visiting teams received more penalties, which Mr. Boyko attributes to "officiating bias": Less-experienced refs called more fouls on the visitors.
Home-field advantage also seems to have a flip side. Several studies have explored the reasons why teams sometimes choke at home (Hint: the expectations of all those friends, moms, and sweethearts in the stands can crush you).
Games without spectators at all are hard to imagine, but not for Steven McCoy. In 1989 he was the center for Siena College's famous "quarantined" hoops team, which played its final nine games in empty arenas following a measles outbreak on the campus. Mr. McCoy's team went 8-1. "It was pure and simple," he says. "It was 'throw the ball up and play,' with no expectations of making the fans happy."
Richard H. Cox, a sports psychologist at the University of Missouri at Columbia, suggests that one can overthink all this. "Teams do get the reputation of being good or bad road teams," he wrote in an e-mail message, "but generally speaking, the best teams are going to win home or away."
Charles (Lefty) Driesell agrees. A retired men's basketball coach who notched a career record of 786-394 at the University of Maryland and three other colleges, Mr. Driesell recalls fans distracting his players now and again. But he attributes the difficulty of winning on the road to the hardships of travel and the visitors' unfamiliarity with their surroundings — not to raucous fans.
So what about all the coaches who thank the home crowd after a big victory? "They're just saying that so the fans will come back the next game," Mr. Driesell says. "They want them to come back and fill the place up so they can get a raise."
Even so, many coaches believe in home-court advantage and often simulate loud, hostile environments during practices. "It's a belief system," says Leonard Zaichkowsky, a sports psychologist at Boston University. "If you think there's a home-court advantage, there will be."
And so perhaps how — or how much — fans actually help their favorite teams win is a mystery nobody really wants to solve.
