'Scuse the ignorance - how is the direction-of-play decided in American sports? In football (the real one 
), it’s by a coin-toss, but only has any significance in fairly bad weather. In cricket, it can be crucial, but again is done with a coin. Nobody has an advantage until the coin is tossed.
I’d agree that the travel aspect would have to be a significant one. The Super 12 Rugby competition is played in three countries (New Zealand, South Africa and Australia). If the visiting team has to fly thousands of kilometres to get to the match there must be an advantage for the home team.
In American football (pro version) the team that wins the coin toss has three options: it can kick off, receive the kickoff, or opt to choose a particular goal. Once the winner makes it choice, then the loser gets to fill in the other parts.
In the second half, the team that lost the toss in the first half gets the first choice.
And after each quarter, the teams change directions.
There is another coin toss to decide who gets the ball first in overtime.
In college football, the winner of the coin toss can opt to defer its choice to the second half.
Oh, and to just make this complete, in American football, the visiting team always gets to choose heads or tails. Although for special games, they will coin a special coin that has each team’s insignia on each side and not have anybody say “heads” or “tails”.
Most of my experience with basketball is at the college level, where undefeated teams are not unheard of, but I suppose that things might be different at the pro level.
But this seems at odds with the previously-mentioned home court advantage of almost 70% in basketball. Does this imply that if a very good pro team is visiting an average pro team, that the odds should be about even? The good team’s advantage from being good would just about cancel out the average team’s home court advantage.
I’m not going to try to grind through all the stats, but a few examples from today’s paper are interesting. Most NBA teams at this point have played about 75 games, with 7 to go.
The two top teams:
Phoenix, 57-17 (.770), home 27-9 (.750), away 30-8 (.789) - they actually are better on the road
Miami, 56-19 (.747), 33-5 (.868), 23-14 (.621)
Two mediocre teams:
Philadelphia 37-37 (.500), 26-13 (.583), 16-22 (.421)
Minnesota 40-35 (.533), 22-15 (.595), 18-20 (.474)
The two worst teams:
Atlanta 11-63 (.149), 8-29 (.216), 3-34 (.081)
New Orleans 18-56 (.243), 11-26 (.297), 7-30 (.189)
Given that the home winning percentages of mediocre teams are not too different from the road winning percentage of a top team like Miami, I think it might be fair to say that the home-away advantage nearly cancels out the difference between a good and a mediocre team. (Nothing can save a team like Atlanta, however.)
I just totalled up the current stats for the NBA. At present, home teams have won 673 out of approximately 1125 games played, for an overall home advantage of 60%, quite a bit lower than the figure I mentioned. I don’t know if this is an unusual year, or if home winning percentages have been going down over time (my memory of the differences between the different sports dates from the situation maybe 20-30 years ago), or whether I just misremembered the stats. I do think, however, that at times the home advantage for basketball has been around 65%.
Wow! Thanks Colibri. This has been great reading. I never would have guess that basketball had so much of an adwantage at their home court. The arenas all look the same to me.