Is Home field advantage real in College Football?

We hear it all the time. Taking a road team is risky, if only because they are going into a hostile environment and will have to deal with another team’s home field crowd. Ah, the elusive home field advantage. Does it actually matter though?

Yes. Yes it does.

Phil Steele has compiled a list of all 120 football bowl series teams and their home winning percentage versus away winning percentage. Not surprisingly, it was teams outside of the BCS that netted the highest difference between home and away win percentage. Troy ranks 1st overall with a difference of 50.7 percent, winning 87.8 percent of their home games in the last decade compared to just 37.1 percent on the road.

How should you interpret that? If a team from the Sun Belt Conference is losing most of its away games, that’s probably because it travels to play high major teams from the SEC, Big 10, Pac-10 and others in the early season, and then they get a handful of winnable games at home.

Of course, take these numbers with a grain of salt. Georgia ranks 120th, Texas 119th, Notre Dame 114th and USC 112th in their difference between home and away games. How come? Well, considering USC won 85.5 percent of their home games and 76 percent of their away games, the difference between the Trojans playing at home versus away was negligible. Worse yet, Georgia actually won more games on the road (84.2 percent) than at home (82.5 percent).