If you’re a regular football bettor, I am sure you have experienced the frustration of watching what you thought to be a winning ticket go into the trash because of a one or two point loss to the spread. Getting the edge on the bookmaker and racking up the win many times can mean finding that 1 or 2 point advantage. Astute handicappers and sport bettors are constantly “shopping the line” on a game they have an interest in betting, looking for that ½ point that could swing a loser into a winner. One way to find that “edge” is knowing what the “real” home field advantage is for a given game matchup. Bookmakers will arbitrarily assign a 3 point line advantage to the home team in the NFL and 4 points to the home team in college matchups.

Taking the time to track the home and away point differential can mean the difference between a winning and a losing season. The 3 and 4 points the books assign to the home teams in football, will usually average out to be fairly close at the end of a season, but these averages are made up of teams that have much less or much higher “real” home advantage. A few years ago a college team actually had a 8.0 point real home advantage and we ended up cashing at least 3 tickets on that team during the season that we would most likely have not even have had considered a play.

Figuring the “real” home field advantage may take a little extra time in your handicapping process, but is not that difficult. Using the linesmakers opening line on a game as our common denominator, we want to determine by the results of the game, how much better against the point differential the bookmakers feel they should win or lose. We track this separately for home and away games.

Example: If the linesmaker determines the home team should win by say 10 points by posting a 10 point spread and that team actually wins the game say by 17 points, then that team played 7 points better in their home game than what was expected. By dividing the difference (7 points) by 10, we have an adjustment to the home field advantage of 0.07 points. If this team had a 4.0 home advantage going into the game, their adjusted real home field advantage would now be 4.07 points per game. Taking the road teams performance, they played 7 points below expectation and therefore we assume they would have played better at home so they also would get the .07 added to their home field advantage, so if their home field advantage going into the game was 4.0, they would now have a 4.07 advantage when playing at home.

The opposite of course holds true when a team plays below expectations. Let’s say the team mentioned above only won the game by 3 points. They played 7 points below expectation and therefore the .07 must be deducted from their home advantage. So their home advantage would now be 3.93. The road team actually played better on the road than anticipated which would diminish their home field advantage number and they would be deducted the .07 from their existing home field advantage.

Anytime a home team plays better than expected (against the spread) they gain points, when the result is less than expected they are deducted points. When the road teams plays better than expected, they are deducted points from their home field advantage when they play below expectations, points are added to their home field advantage.

By the middle of the season you could find a matchup that would give you a 3 or 4 point advantage over the bookmaker. Some teams consistently play as good on the road as they do at home and therefore have very little home field advantage. On the other hand, some teams perform week after week better at home than on the road and have a much better home field advantage…Getting a matchup with a road team that plays as good on the road as they do at home, versus a team with a poor home field advantage, takes away the 4 points home advantage the books add to the spread. This is a huge advantage when handicapping this game.