On the right-hand pages of the magazine for all 131 teams, I list the home field advantage. I think college football crowds are the best in sports and some teams have larger home field edges than others. In Las Vegas the standard is to give 3 points to the home team. I believe there is a large difference in home field edges in college football. Traveling to face Mississippi St and having to face the cowbell noise is a daunting task. Some stadiums that may not be 100,000 but are very loud like Oregon and Washington are a lot tougher venue than traveling to Akron or Connecticut. This year my home field edges in the magazine range from 2 to 5.5.

This will be a four-part series showing you the numbers that I use to determine the home field edge. I put each category into my computer and then weight the columns. My computer comes up with a home field edge number. I go down the list and adjust them based on my thoughts of each home field and how tough it is to play but I basically stay within a half point of my computers numbers as they are well thought out.

The first category we will look at is the Straight Up win percentage of each team for the last three years and the last five years. There is a clear home field edge in College Football and over the last 3 years the 131 FBS teams are 1611-893 at home for a winning percentage of 64.34%. One note about the last 5 years. In 2020 many games were played without crowds in the stadiums, so I did not count 2020 in the last 3 years. The last three years only includes games from 2021, 2019 and 2018.

Here is the last three years home field records chart.

There are four teams that have not lost at home over the last three year’s and they are Oklahoma, Clemson, UCF and Cincinnati. You will notice that the perfect 100% is good enough to earn a 6.0 home field edge for the three years. At the bottom of the chart are Connecticut, Akron, Rutgers and Kansas. Connecticut is 3-15 at home the last 3 years which only get a 1.0 home field edge for this category.

Here is the last five years home field records chart.

The last five years only includes games from 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017 and 2016. Over the last five years (once again excluding 2020) the home teams are 2634-1501 at home for a 63.7% winning percentage. Once again, the last five years do not include 2020 when there were no crowds at most of the games. As you can see no team earned that perfect 6.0 home field edge in this category as every team had at least one loss. Alabama lost to LSU in 2019 at home and LSU went on to become the national champs. Clemson has not lost at home in Death Valley since 2016 when Pat Narduzzi and Pitt beat them 43-42 as a 21-point dog. James Madison is 37-2 at home the last 5 years but has been facing FCS teams so it is interesting to see if their 94.9% winning percentage will hold up versus tougher competition. It might surprise you to see Memphis at #14 with a 30-6 record at home in the Liberty Bowl. The Tigers are 10-15 on the road in that span. The bottom four teams are Rutgers, Rice, Connecticut and Kansas. This time Kansas is at the bottom with an 8-24 home record which earns a 1.5 home field edge in this column.

Tomorrow I will have the ATS records for each team over the last three and five years at home. Remember if you are out and about this weekend the magazine is still at all Barnes and Nobles but if your local Barnes and Noble is sold out, it should start hitting other stores like Books-A-Million, CVS, Food Lion, Kroger, HEB, Harris Teeter, Ingles, HyVee, Meijer’s, Publix. Food Lion, Safeway, Walgreens and Walmart this weekend as well.

You can also order the magazine right HERE and we update the digital magazine all the way thru September, and you can purchase that HERE.