When the Penn State football team lost to Temple almost every Nittney Lion was quite complexed. What could be the reason why our great school would loose to Temple? It could be because we weren’t playing on our own turf?
Jeremy P. Jamieson, from the University of Rochwell, posted a paper that reported that when teams play at home they have a 60% of winning. Jeremy did a meta-analysis of studies ranging from golf, boxing, and tennis allowing him to explore different sports’ cultures.
People argue about the cause of this statistic saying it is due to a multitude of reasons such as: traveling, having rambunctious fans screaming at you, and referee bias. For example, whenever a rival school comes to Penn State to challenge our elite teams our fans always blow their eardrums out by screaming at the top of our lungs. When players are trying to focus on
the game and they have the fans screaming it’s hard to focus on the main task. This seems to be the case in some stadiums such as Century Link Field where in December 2013 Seattle Seahawks fans set the record for loudest outdoor sports stadium at 137.6 decibels (dB). To put that in perspective humans physically start feeling pain at 125 decibels (dB).
A second reason why this statistic is so high is the amount of traveling players have to do. There are instances where players have to travel all over the country which can disrupt their sleeping cycles making them too fatigued to play the game with all their strength. Furthermore, when players aren’t playing on their home field they have a lack of spirit or incentive to win their game because their fans are not there.
Lastly, there is such thing as referee bias unfortunately. This can be shown mostly in soccer games either in the MLS or games around the world. Organizations like FIFA are known for being corrupt. Even recently a huge investigation was launched to investigate the organizations and its functions.
Whether or not there is a trend here, no one can deny the general atmosphere at a home game. Home team spirit is so impactful on the players and gives them incentive to win for not only their team but their fans.
I always wondered if having a game on your home court is beneficial to the home court’s team or not. When I played volleyball for my high school’s varsity team, having a game on your home court made us feel like we had the upper hand. I researched some statistics and “between 1999-2008, a team with home-court advantage in the playoffs won more than three out of four series” (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1520496-how-important-is-home-court-advantage-in-the-nba). Maybe it’s the feel of having a big crowd, or the familiar space that eases the game, but a home court advantage does in fact exist.