Reddit reviews Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won

The key to success with the always going on fourth is to let it influence 1st-3rd down calls. The Arkansas HS coach they referenced in the article almost always runs on third and long, defenses are still caught off guard by it and it sets him up with much more manageable fourth down conversions.

The best breakdown of his system is in the book Scorcasting, which I honestly can't recommend highly enough.

The book Scorecasting did a breakdown and found what sosuhme said. I don't have the book near me at the moment or else I'd take a picture or something.

There was a chapter about this in the book Scorecasting.

I don't really have the time or expertise to delve deeply into those questions, but a coworker recommended this book, which sounds right up your alley.

There is a good book on the subject called Scorecasting and iirc they assert that the NBA has the greatest home team advantage due to refs making favorable calls.

Agreed. Scorecasting is a great book. Wertheim breaks down going for it in three bullets

• Inside the opponent's 45 yard line facing anything less than fourth and eight
  
• Inside the opponent's 33 yard line, they are better of going for it on anything less than fourth and 11
  
• Regardless of field position, on anything less than fourth and five, teams are always better off going for it

The refs.

Researchers looking into the phenomenon have been able to largely rule out the "usual suspects" for home field advantage (check out the book Scorecasting - that's not an affiliate link, just to be clear), with the exception of some scheduling bias.

But a paper by Thomas Dohmen using the Bundesliga for data showed the refs tend to favor the home team. And specifically, they favor the home team more the closer they are to the crowd: so a pitch surrounded by a wide warning track gave less home field advantage than a pitch where the stands come right up to the field.

Though I don't have data to support it, this intuitively explains why the effect is more pronounced in soccer than major American sports: soccer calls are quite often judgement calls by the ref rather than strict adherence to detailed rules. No call vs foul, just a foul vs worthy of a booking, yellow card vs red card, largely comes down to how "cynical" the ref thinks the contact was (I obviously don't mean there aren't rules about what constitutes each, but whether it was a hold or just impeding the progress of a player can be a judgement call, and changes an indirect kick to a direct kick. To be clear, I think relying on the judgement of refs is a net benefit to soccer - you never end up with a decades-long argument about how to define a "catch").

And if the game leans a bit harder on the judgement of the referee, it makes sense that a factor which influences that judgement will have a proportionally larger effect on the sport.

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won. I can't give you a quote since I rented it from the library but the Amazon link mentions Home Field Advantage in the description:

>Drawing from Moskowitz's original research, as well as studies from fellow economists such as bestselling author Richard Thaler, the authors look at: the influence home-field advantage has on the outcomes of games in all sports and why it exists...

ETA: FWIW, this guy disagrees with the findings although I have no idea where he's going with some of it. "If that's the case, then you'd expect home and visiting teams to have similar numbers at equal strength." Ummmm...no you wouldn't.

Indeed. But like I said, there have been a number of studies.

Thomas Dohmen published a paper that demonstrated that Bundesliga referees are less influenced by the home crowd in stadiums where there's a track around the field than where they exists no separation between the field and the crowd. This has been extrapolated as a reason why referees in the NBA, where there's no separation at all between the game and the fans, overwhelming favor the home team... I think it's talked about in the book Scorecasting but I don't remember for sure.

Here's a piece on how HCA has declined in the NBA over time, which it attributes to a number of factors, such as the rise in three-point attempts diminishing the impact of referees. Not really a study so much as a piece put together by the stats department.

Et. al.

Yes it does. When you exclude the other factors and the metrics don't change (i.e. controlling for those factors) that means those factors do not play a part in the causation of what you are studying.

There have been many studies of this by many economists. They all arrive at the same conclusion: that home field advantage is explained by referee bias and not the other traditional explanations. It's not "scientific." It's scientific. They have a hypothesis, they gather data to test the hypothesis, and they make a conclusion based on the result of the tests. That's the scientific method. You, on the other hand, regurgitated explanations made by pundits without any further analysis.

>I could prove you wrong if I wanted to, but I don't want to right now so just accept my word for it.

If you could focus on travel and come to the same conclusion then do so. Find me the research that supports your conclusion.

Except that playing at home being an advantage because of fans is a big myth. The only advantage of playing at home is officiating bias.

If you can, read the book Scorecasting. I was trying to find a big enough section of their analysis of Home Field (Pitch) Advantage, but it was hard finding a direct quote sufficient enough. While the book focuses on American sports, they do look at European Football leagues when analyzing home advantage.

In case you haven't read it yet, Scorecasting speaks to this problem, as well as a number of others. I.e. applying economic theory and statistical analysis to a lot of common-sense notions in sports.

MLS is in a bit of an odd position -- partly because of its rigid economics, partly because of its age, and partly because of its still small footprint in the US sports landscape.

In particular, there is little correlation between salary and on-field success, although this is a lot harder to quantify than the linked analysis implies.

One question Scorecasting tries to address is the importance of the 'star' player -- think of it as a proxy for a DP. The conclusion is that in a game with a lot of players (e.g. NFL), a single star is rarely enough to make a team.

Obviously there are exceptions -- the Colts without Peyton Manning are terrible, for example. On the other hand, Joe Gibbs' Redskins won three Super Bowls with three different QBs, none of whom are hall-of-famers.

In contrast, an NBA team more or less needs a star player to even attempt to be competitive. One player has a much bigger impact among five starters than among 22 (plus special teams).

I think one can quantify what a DP means to a team, but one has to do it in a different way. For example: what's the difference in goal differential one can expect per game from a top-flight DP?

Or to put it another way, what is the plot of expected goal differential per game vs salary for a DP?

I don't know how realistic a calculation this would be, but I bet you could arrive at some numbers -- e.g. Beckham is worth +0.5, Henry is worth +0.3, Marquez is worth -0.2 (a DP with a minus rating is terrible).

All the same, there's this fact: a correlation between salary spending and consistent on-field results is only strong in unconstrained leagues. And always with caveats, exceptions, and outliers.

The Yankees are a consistently competitive team, and are consistently the highest spenders. On the other hand, the Orioles are consistently among the highest spenders and have been a terrible team for over a decade.

Man U are consistently among the highest spenders in the EPL, and are the most consistently successful team; Liverpool are also regularly near the top of the spend table and, let's face it, have seen a lot better days.

All the same, these are unconstrained leagues. If you look at the NFL (in a CBA year), there is not much of a relationship between spending and success. The Cowboys are consistently at the top of the spend scale, but when have they last won a Super Bowl? When have they last been in one?

The salary cap in MLS is even more extreme. And one could argue that weakness at one position is not balanced out by strength at another -- e.g. if your right center back is terrible, you'll give up more goals than your DP attacking mid will create for you.

Or in other words: Do DPs matter? Yes. Are they important? Yes. How important are they? I don't know.

But I do think it's possible to quantify what a DP should be worth at a given salary in terms of extra goals per game, and therefore possible to quantify whether that DP is living up to expectations.

But as for drawing up the specific equations, I'll leave that to someone else.

tl;dr: If you like thinking about this kind of questions, read Scorecasting. And throw Soccernomics on your list as well. And as a side-note: I love this forum for having discussions like this one. Keep it up.

If you're a sports guy I recommend Scorecasting