Home field advantage in college football is pretty much gone during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to CBS, home teams are 47-32 through this past weekend, which is a winning percentage of 59.5%. (RELATED: David Hookstead Is The True King In The North When It Comes To College Football)
If that trend holds through the rest of the season, which would seem likely, it’ll be the worst college football season for home teams since 2005.
Fans are completely banned from some college football stadiums during the coronavirus pandemic, and they’re heavily restricted at others. One thing is for certain, and it’s the fact that we’ve never seen a season like this before.
I’ve been telling you all for months and months that fans being restricted at games would make a gigantic impact.
I hope you all listened because that’s exactly what happened. When you remove fans from a stadium, it gives the road team a huge bump.
As pointed out by Urban Meyer, in some cases that bump might be good for an extra 10 points.
Could no fans in the stands mean as much as a 10-point swing?@CoachUrbanMeyer thinks it’s possible at a place like @PennStateFball, which is the “most difficult place” he’s coached in his career.
Full Urban Analysis with @gerrydinardo ➡️ https://t.co/UNaXleZIsB pic.twitter.com/xslyi22Bsg
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) September 28, 2020
The talent gap between average teams and good teams isn’t as big as some people seem to think it is. Fans play a huge role making the stadium loud and a nightmare for visiting teams, especially on offense.
You remove that aspect, and you’re going to see home teams in trouble a lot more often than you usually would. That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen this season.
LSU won the national championship last season, and opened 2020 by losing at home to Mississippi State and Mike Leach. Things change fast.
Mike Leach recaps his first day as an SEC head coach: “ better than average”
Uhhhh ya think?pic.twitter.com/LUNlFnNCGa
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 26, 2020
We’ll have to wait to see how it shakes out the rest of the year, but I think we’ll be seeing a lot more home teams go down before it’s all said and done.