Altitude, Attitude & Denver's Home Field Advantage

With NFL teams scrambling for playoff positioning -- sports analysts have been talking about the Broncos and Seahawks trying to clinch home field advantage -- as they march towards to the Super Bowl.  Most sports fans know that home teams have a home field advantage.  But how much of an edge is home field?  We took a look at statistics over several decades worth of data:

• In the NFL, home teams win 57.3% of the time.
• In MLB, home teams win 53.9% of the time.
• In the NBA, home teams win 60.5% of the time.  

Success at home can be attributed to the impact of the crowd, getting favorable calls from officials (related impact of crowds and peer pressure) -- and the players being in familiar surroundings.  This could include idiosyncrasies of the playing field -- or merely being in the comfort of their homes (and less travel).  

Home Field Advantage for Individual Teams: Denver

To study home field advantage for individual teams -- and to adjust for stronger and weaker teams -- we compare team records at home versus their records away.  Over the longer-term time-frame, we see that:

• NFL teams win 57.3% of the time at home, thus winning 42.7% on the road -- for a 14.6% difference.  
• Similarly, we see that the difference for baseball is 53.9% - 46.1% = 7.8%, and 
• For the NBA: 60.5% - 39.5% = 21.0%.  

When you add high altitude to the mix, it is clear that teams that are based in Denver may have a significant advantage over their opponents.   ...   The Rockies, the Nuggets and the Broncos all have strong records at home. Over the past decade, the Colorado-based teams have combined for one of the best home-field advantages of all major professional sports.

In the NBA, the Nuggets are about 30% better than the league average for home-field advantage (+27.6% home-field edge). In baseball, the Rockies almost double the league home-field advantage at +13.8%. Interestingly, the Broncos are only about average in terms of home-field advantage, at +12.5% over the past decade - although previously, the Broncos home-field advantage was notably strong.

Over the past decade, the Rockies and Nuggets have consistently placed at the top of their respective leagues in terms of home-field advantage, and in total the Colorado-based teams can boast "attitude at home," in addition to the "altitude advantage."

Read more here: http://EzineArticles.com/8211155

Seattle Seahawks: Noise

In recent years, the Seattle Seahawks have had one of the largest home field advantages in the NFL.  This has been attributed to the noise levels of their home crowds, exacerbated by their stadium, which seems to funnel the noise levels.

The noise routinely wreaks havoc on opposing offenses as quarterbacks struggle to call plays or audible at the line scrimmage without the use of non-verbal communication. Offenses are often baited into false-start and delay-of-game penalties due to the noise at CenturyLink.

Read more here:
http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf/2013/11/extreme_decibel_levels_give_th.html


Home Field Advantage and Confidence

No matter what NFL playoff teams clinch home field advantage, they will have a decided edge.  And -- home field advantage for the Broncos and Seahawks can go a long way in determining this year's Super Bowl participants.

Home field advantage for these teams are related to attitude, confidence and mental toughness -- concepts of sports psychology that can improve teams' chances of winning games and winning championships.


Please visit our "Who Will Win" blog for a Monte Carlo simulation of the college football BCS game. 

Andy Murray takes Wimbledon!

Less than a year ago, we had a popular post on our blog about Andy Murray's win at the U.S. Open -- and his relationship with new coach, Ivan Lendl.  The blog post talks about their relationship, Lendl's history -- and tennis tactics.

At the time, it appeared that Andy Murray had "gotten over the hump" -- and that perhaps the added confidence could take him to other Grand Slam titles.  Fast forward nine months -- and that is, indeed, the case.  This past week, Murray continued the stretch of confidence that has now brought him the Wimbledon crown -- and perhaps will challenge for the #1 spot in the tennis world.

Andy Murray's story is great for sports psychology and persistence -- and in particular, the power of:

• Confidence,
• Mental toughness, and
• Coaching.

Sports & Tennis fans: please complete our poll on the left-hand-side!

Congrats to Andy Murray on winning the tennis US Open

Hearty congratulations go to Andy Murray on winning his first Grand Slam -- and to his coach, tennis great Ivan Lendl, who helped Murray on his path to a Grand Slam Championship.  In some ways, both Murray's and Lendl's stories -- are about how different people find their ways to championships in different ways.
Some champions have an easier route to success, but we're sure Andy Murray's U.S. Open win is very sweet to Murray and his camp.

In our blog, we often talk about championship characteristics such as "mental toughness" and confidence.  Murray followed his Olympic Gold Medal with this Grand Slam -- and this added confidence will only make Murray a tougher opponent for the current tennis triumvirate of Federer, Nadal & Djokovic.  Tennis fans are in for a treat because every major tournament now has at least four legitimate contenders.  Back in June, the NY Times had a good article on Murray and Lendl -- that was both prescient about the potential for success -- but was also questioning:

Tennis’s new odd couple flew back to Florida and put in two hard weeks in Delray Beach, and in his next semifinal encounter with Djokovic in the Dubai Duty Free tournament, Murray beat him soundly. The next day in the finals, however, he was smoked by Federer. The following week, still deflated, he lost his first match at Indian Wells in California, and by the time I caught up with Murray and Lendl at the next tournament, the Sony Ericsson in Key Biscayne, the sudden improvement was looking like the spike medical researchers find when the control group is given a placebo.

“Whenever there’s a new relationship,” says Todd Martin, who worked with Djokovic for eight months in 2009 and 2010, “hope springs eternal. This is the girl for me. This is the coach for me. I’ve picked the right college. But eventually reality sets in.” 

On Andy Murray's style:

In the era of power tennis, tactical niceties can seem obsolete. A player bangs his serve, runs around his backhand and whales away with his forehand until his opponent submits — and the prototype for this brute style was Lendl himself, who bludgeoned rivals with his one-off Adidas racket as if he were clubbing baby seals.

Murray, an avid boxing fan and admirer of the great counterpuncher Floyd Mayweather Jr., disdains haymakers. Instead of going toe to toe — or as Murray says, “flat, flat, flat” — he subjects his opponent to an unsettling mix of topspin and slice, hard and soft, low and high, angle and depth. As his mother puts it pithily, “Andy messes them about.”

In today's game of professional tennis, Lendl says:

“Tennis,” he told me later, “is basically a game where you try to create an opportunity for yourself to finish the point, because you can’t wait for the opponent to miss anymore. Well, if you create an opportunity and don’t take advantage of it, you let the opponent back to even, then you are just starting the point over, so you have to take advantage of them.”

On how Lendl could help him, Murray said:

“He was at the top of the game for a while before he broke through,” Murray says. “He knows about all that stuff. That was the other thing — he understands and is very sympathetic, whereas a lot of people aren’t.”

The NY Times article can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/magazine/can-ivan-lendl-lead-andy-murray-to-tennis-greatness.html?pagewanted=all

Wimbledon: Men's Final

Yesterday, we blogged about our tennis measure of focus and mental toughness: Big Point Performance (BPP).  We used a similar approach for the Men's Final at Wimbledon -- which has Nadal facing Djokovic.

Djokovic has had a spectacular year, going 47-1 and has taken the #1 ranking in the world from Nadal -- who held that top spot for 56 weeks.  "Djoko" the Joker has the momentum AND the confidence on his side.  This should be a great match, with new #1 -- facing Nadal, an all-time great -- who will be gunning for Djokovic.

We were a bit surprised to see Nadal outperform Djokovic during their respective quarterfinal and semifinal matches -- in terms of Big Point Performance (BPP).  Thus, our "quant fact" stat will go with Nadal to add to his list of Grand Slam titles -- but other sport psychology factors such as confidence and momentum go to Djoko.  As a result there is no "quant fact" prediction for the Men's Final.  Enjoy the match!

Springing into the Baseball Season (NY Times)

The baseball season is ready to get underway and here is some fun analysis we did for spring training -- and what it might mean for the regular season.  (By Carlton Chin, Don LaFronz & Jay Granat; picked up by the NY Times; here's an excerpt).

Spring training is almost over and your team has been red hot. Or maybe your team has had a tough spring. But who cares? It’s just spring training, right? Do wins and losses during spring training mean anything? To answer that, we analyzed whether spring training is connected to performance during the regular season.

Data shows that spring training can be a leading indicator for regular-season performance. In fact, some big surprises are sometimes predicted by spring training results. 

Read more here:
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/divining-clues-from-spring-training-success/#more-41909

The article is by Carlton Chin, a fund manager for Adamah/CARAT and Don LaFronz, a financial adviser.  Jay Granat, a psychotherapist, contributed reporting.  

Granat Interviewed by CBS on Jets

Dr. Granat, co-author of the book, "Who Will Win the Big Game? A Psychological & Mathematical Approach," by Carlton Chin & Jay Granat, was interviewed by CBS. Granat discusses sports psychology concepts such as confidence and mental toughness. Below is an excerpt from the interview. The entire link is below, which has a video clip:

“His freewheeling style; his playful style is freeing up the players, at least this group of players to perform to their fullest potential,” Dr. Granat said.

"I think he thinks out what he’s gonna do before he does it very often. Take a second look, because you can’t argue with success,” Dr. Granat said.

And Dr. Granat said psychologically, when looking at Rex Ryan you can’t forget the impact of his legendary coach father, Buddy Ryan.

“That family style, this is the way they approach the game. They’re not soft-spoken. They’re tough. They’re probably mentally tough. They believe in themselves. And they’d rather err on the side of being overconfident than under-confident,” Dr. Granat said.

Some opponents and teams say Rex Ryan is crazy. But if you talk to a sports psychologist, what you hear is crazy … like a fox.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/01/18/fans-jets-rex-may-indeed-be-crazy-like-a-fox/