On every right-hand team page in the magazine, I list that teams’ current home power ratings. These home ratings go from a low of two points to a high of six points. I have nine sets of power ratings, and this is the adjustment I give to the home team. As I have mentioned in previous blogs the home teams in the FBS win about 64% of their games.
Most of my home field edges are based on performance on the field at home. I also have to factor in what type of environment each team plays in front of. There are three different factors that I put into my computer equation. The first would be size of the stadium that a team plays in. The Big House in Michigan seats 107,601 which can be pretty intimidating for players used to playing in smaller stadiums. The smallest home field belongs to Kennesaw St which has a stadium capacity of 10,200. Sam Houston St is next lowest at 14,000.
The second factor and a little more important is actual attendance. Now, we have all seen games on TV or been to games where the announced attendance seems way off as they could have gone by tickets sold rather than actual people in the seats. Last year seven teams played in front of an announced average attendance of 100,000 or more and the top 3 were all in the Big Ten with Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State. The next three on the list were Tennessee, Texas, LSU and Alabama. At the bottom of the list in 2022 was Sam Houston at 7,611 as they were going thru a transition year and not even playing a full schedule. Naturally all the teams at the bottom of the list are Group of Five Schools The lowest rated Power 5 team is a newcomer to the Power 4 and it is SMU at 22,616. The lowest rated of the Power 5 conferences last year was Northwestern at 23,257.
The final category that I look at concerning attendance is percentage of capacity. Before I started my College Football magazine, I actually used to follow other sports than football! I would go to a Cleveland Indians game in Cleveland Stadium. I was there the night they filmed the scenes for Major League and the 80,000-seat stadium was almost full as it was a Marathon Oil giveaway night where you received free tickets with every fill up. I also went to the old Cleveland Stadium when there was an announced crowd of 8,000 but you could count by hand the roughly 1,000 people on hand in the cavernous stadium. A large full stadium is a huge plus but when a stadium is over half empty it does not generate anywhere near the home field edge.
Twenty one teams this past year played in front of average crowds that met or exceeded capacity and they were Colorado, Appalachian St, Oregon St, Kansas St, Oregon, Michigan, Utah, James Madison, Purdue, Penn State, Texas, Florida, TCU, South Carolina, Clemson, Oklahoma St, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Notre Dame and Iowa. Temple playing in the Philadelphia Eagles Lincoln Financial Field had just 19.9% capacity.
Here are the attendance numbers for each team and I have ranked them by actual attendance.
This year I have also included the grading scale that my computer used for each of the categories. The first two columns were graded from 6 to 1.5 but the capacity scale deserved to have a 0 if a team played in front of an average capacity of under 20%.
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