Back to back 10am games

[hawksfansinceday1]

Because thats how home field advantage should work in sports. Complaining about kickoff time would be like opposing fans whining about crowd noise at CenturyLink during a playoff game.

Why should a team like Carolina win 15 of 16 games and then play in a more accommodating time slot to the last team in the tournament? A team they went to on the road a few months earlier and BEAT? It makes absolutely no sense. HFA should encompass every advantage that comes with winning the most games that year.

If the Seahawks didn't enjoy it (I'm guessing they didn't) then I don't know.. don't blow 17 point leads to the Bengals. Don't face plant with the lead in the opener against the Rams. Don't blow a 13 point lead at home to the Panthers. Don't lose at home to Case Keenum. Don't spot the Cardinals a 19-0 lead on your home field.

The crazy thing about sports is more often than not, you control your own fate. The Seahawks didn't do a good enough job of that last season and that's why they played on the road for their entire postseason.

For the playoffs, that would be fine and deserved, but think about the disadvantage West coast teams have in the regular season that afforded the East coast teams to get home field advantage. It is a distinct disadvantage that tilts the playing field to the opposition all while the NFL is spouting nonsense about parity.

COMPLETELY agree ducati. It's earned in the playoffs by having a better record and rightfully so. It's handed to the east coast teams in the regular season because of bias. And it's particularly egregious because scheduling was changed to help east coast teams not come west as often a few years back. All I want to see is the same consideration given to west coast teams. I say no more than two 10:00 AM Pacific time starts for Mountain and Pacific time zone teams That would be in line with the max of two trips west for east coast teams per season.

Parity my ass.

 

[Popeyejones]

I appreciate the skepticism. How would you have presented the data? Y-axis from 0 to 1? .5 to 1? Seem like that would obscure the (significant) result. Just curious - where do you teach? (I also work in academia)

The delta in win percentage had a p-value on the order of .0001. I appreciate the skepticism, but there were no shady assumptions made. If you wont take my word for it, you might take solace in knowing that an accompanying paper was published in a national, peer-reviewed journal.

Congrats on the pub! :th2thumbs:


Re: truncating the y, my general rule of thumb is to stay within the bounds of what's possible in the real world, and not to truncate unless there's an extremely good reason to do so.

For something like win % in the NFL in which teams seem to be going 2-14 and 14-2 every year, I think 0-1 makes a ton of sense.

Not truncating the Y doesn't obscure that p <=.0001, it simply gives us some graphical insight into the effect size.

P is nice and all, but it's the coefficient that really matters, as P can be highly dependent on N (the problem big data people keep running into as everything is highly significant but the coefficients are essentially meaningless).

I guess for me I've just had too much work that I had to sh!tcan after seriously going back to the drawing board and washing out my effects by reconsidering OVB and colliders. It just happened again last week actually with a side project I've been working on for the past few months, and it suuuucked.

(I'm in the social sciences at a big research university, btw; don't want to say more because I'm pre-tenure and spending my free time being annoying on a rival fan board :lol: )

 

[Popeyejones]

In this case the result is highly significant and the Y-axis scaling emphasizes that in a reasonable way.

Graphically misrepresenting the size of the effect is never a good solution for conveying the statistical significance of the effect.

If anything to do so is counterproductive, as it introduces suspicion about all the other decisions that were made behind the curtain to get to the statistically significant effect.

I'm not saying (or even remotely implying) that's actually the case here, but it forces that question to be raised where it otherwise usually is not.

 

[RedAlice]

This topic is now of interest to me, as Rams are now on the West Coast.

Link to me bringing this up to Rams fans:
http://www.ramsfansunited.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2107

It's not of too much interest to Rams fans right now.

However, an interesting article on the topic was posted:
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-foo ... ayoff-slot

Now, here's where the sluggish start comes in: Of those 56 teams, five of them have been shut out in the first half, and almost all of them were West Coast teams (four out of five).

Think about that. West Coast teams only consist of 19.7 percent of the 1 p.m. playoff field, but they made up 80 percent of the teams that got shut out in the first half. And here's the crazy part: All four West Coast teams that were shut out were Pete Carroll teams.

Since 2010 when Carroll took over, the Seahawks have been outscored 75-0 during the first half of 1 p.m. ET playoff games, so the first half meltdown in Carolina wasn't a complete surprise if you've watched the Seahawks in the postseason before. Seattle actually trailed Atlanta 20-0 at halftime in January 2013. In January 2011, they were shutout 21-0 in the first half by the Bears.


And: Hawk fans should feel free to come talk to Rams fans on that board. It's a good one. :thirishdrinkers:

 

[Siouxhawk]

I like this conversation. I've always wondered why there's 9 to 11 games at noon (CST) and only 3 or 4 at 3 p.m.? It seems to me the West Coast teams should be slotted into those 3 p.m. games on the road all the time. It wouldn't be that much of an adjustment for the home team and it wouldn't be such a shock for the West Coast teams. Cmon NFL ... this is easy

Never going to happen thanks to the wonderful world of TV and TV ratings.

May make more sense, but just not going to happen as FOX/CBS covets the ability to have a small slate of games in that 4:25 slot so they can feature a game to a national audience.

That makes sense. More sets tuned into that "national" game drives up the ratings and amount they can charge sponsorship time I suppose. Just trying to come up with an idea to make things more equitable to West Coast teams, especially in the playoffs.

 

[gaucho]

Sorry to beat this to death, but I promised a few of you that I'd keep you updated on my (possibly idiotic) quest to get the NFL to eliminate the 10am starts. Today football outsiders published an article that I wrote on the topic! If you're interested in reading, it's linked below. If you're willing to share it with interested parties, I'd appreciate the help.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-a ... uling-bias

 

[seabowl]

Sorry to beat this to death, but I promised a few of you that I'd keep you updated on my (possibly idiotic) quest to get the NFL to eliminate the 10am starts. Today football outsiders published an article that I wrote on the topic! If you're interested in reading, it's linked below. If you're willing to share it with interested parties, I'd appreciate the help.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-a ... uling-bias

Nice job. Now we need to get this to an even more mainstream outlet. Keep up the momentum!!!!

 

[hawksfansinceday1]

Thank you again for your efforts. I truly hope something comes of this for the Rams, Hawks, Niners, Raiders, Cards, Broncos and Chargers

 

[seabowl]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

 

[RichNhansom]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Assuming you mean east coast teams traveling west and playing night games, absolutely but it also only happens about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling and playing 10am games.

The NFL has also already made an adjustment to help east coast teams by preventing them from having to play more than 2 west coast games in a season and in those events they don't have as large a disadvantage as west coast teams traveling east because they are playing 3 hours later than their regular starting time instead of 3 hours earlier. Yet the NFL completely ignored the west coast disadvantage of teams that typically travel up to 10 times as much in a season, have to play 3 hours earlier than their normal start time and make as many as 7 trips east with early starts in a season including playoffs like last year when we were required to play 2 back to back east coast games with early starts in the playoffs after playing 5 10am games in season.

Completely eliminating all early starts for west coast teams will likely never happen but if the NFL feels it is appropriate to modify the east coast schedules due to difficulty it should at very least, limit 10am starts for west coast teams to 2 a year max and never in the playoffs. That would be a much easier adjustment then what they did for east coast teams so why hasn't it happened?

 

[Jazzhawk]

Sorry to beat this to death, but I promised a few of you that I'd keep you updated on my (possibly idiotic) quest to get the NFL to eliminate the 10am starts. Today football outsiders published an article that I wrote on the topic! If you're interested in reading, it's linked below. If you're willing to share it with interested parties, I'd appreciate the help.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-a ... uling-bias

Awesome to see it in 'print'!! Congratualtions!

It looks like some editing was able to be done to your intro after all. Way to back up and support your findings and keep things positive on the FO comments section! LOVE IT!

 

[gaucho]

Awesome to see it in 'print'!! Congratualtions!

It looks like some editing was able to be done to your intro after all. Way to back up and support your findings and keep things positive on the FO comments section! LOVE IT!

Thanks man, it's been a fun couple of days.

And yeah, I made several changes that came directly from the feedback of this board, so thanks to all.

 

[Laloosh]

That little factoid about Olympic world records is going in my back pocket. Have a source you can share on it?

 

[seabowl]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Assuming you mean east coast teams traveling west and playing night games, absolutely but it also only happens about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling and playing 10am games.

The NFL has also already made an adjustment to help east coast teams by preventing them from having to play more than 2 west coast games in a season and in those events they don't have as large a disadvantage as west coast teams traveling east because they are playing 3 hours later than their regular starting time instead of 3 hours earlier. Yet the NFL completely ignored the west coast disadvantage of teams that typically travel up to 10 times as much in a season, have to play 3 hours earlier than their normal start time and make as many as 7 trips east with early starts in a season including playoffs like last year when we were required to play 2 back to back east coast games with early starts in the playoffs after playing 5 10am games in season.

Completely eliminating all early starts for west coast teams will likely never happen but if the NFL feels it is appropriate to modify the east coast schedules due to difficulty it should at very least, limit 10am starts for west coast teams to 2 a year max and never in the playoffs. That would be a much easier adjustment then what they did for east coast teams so why hasn't it happened?

I actually meant the start time of the game not travel. Prime time night games that start at 8:30pm eastern standard time, I would think would be tougher on a team from the eastern time zone rather than teams that reside in the pacific standard time zone. Now we know prime time night games will not go away but I'm curious how this affects est. teams when they are playing games almost if not past midnight in their time zone. Gaucho?

 

[Scottemojo]

Wow. The statistical wang measuring in the comments replies to that article are stupid. Good for the writer keeping his cool when he replies.

 

[RichNhansom]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Assuming you mean east coast teams traveling west and playing night games, absolutely but it also only happens about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling and playing 10am games.

The NFL has also already made an adjustment to help east coast teams by preventing them from having to play more than 2 west coast games in a season and in those events they don't have as large a disadvantage as west coast teams traveling east because they are playing 3 hours later than their regular starting time instead of 3 hours earlier. Yet the NFL completely ignored the west coast disadvantage of teams that typically travel up to 10 times as much in a season, have to play 3 hours earlier than their normal start time and make as many as 7 trips east with early starts in a season including playoffs like last year when we were required to play 2 back to back east coast games with early starts in the playoffs after playing 5 10am games in season.

Completely eliminating all early starts for west coast teams will likely never happen but if the NFL feels it is appropriate to modify the east coast schedules due to difficulty it should at very least, limit 10am starts for west coast teams to 2 a year max and never in the playoffs. That would be a much easier adjustment then what they did for east coast teams so why hasn't it happened?

I actually meant the start time of the game not travel. Prime time night games that start at 8:30pm eastern standard time, I would think would be tougher on a team from the eastern time zone rather than teams that reside in the pacific standard time zone. Now we know prime time night games will not go away but I'm curious how this affects est. teams when they are playing games almost if not past midnight in their time zone. Gaucho?

So your talking about west coast teams traveling east to play in prime time? That's a good question but I would bet it likely neutralizes the disadvantage the west coast team has from traveling cross country making the match essentially pretty even.

I would be curious if there is a large enough sample of those games and how they statistically play out though.

 

[RichNhansom]

Wow. The statistical wang measuring in the comments replies to that article are stupid. Good for the writer keeping his cool when he replies.

Agreed Scott, Gaucho has done an amazing job at both providing information as well as dealing with backlash from some. Very impressed with his work and professional mannerism.

 

[kearly]

Unfortunately it won't let me make an account over there since their captcha checker is broken. But if I could sign up, I'd have a lot to say that commenter Ammek. First, he shows a record of games from 1980-1994 that mildly contradicts the findings of the article, but says he only checked 5 of the 7 teams "because he didn't have time." That makes me think the two teams he didn't check had inconvenient findings. Also, going from 1980 to 1994 screams selective sampling. Why not including all seven teams and go from 1980 to 2000 (the article's data begins in 2001). Why leave off 1995-2000? Probably because it had inconvenient data.

Secondly, you can't really "adjust" results for DVOA. As much as I love DVOA, it is unreliable as a stat until pretty late in the year, and by the time it becomes reliable it's basically just an average of the season performance, plus it is weighted towards end of year performance. Case in point why this is flawed, the Seahawks tend to be pretty bad early in the year most seasons, but their final DVOA is #1. When teams ilke the Lions and Cowboys nearly beat a struggling early season Seahawks team, Ammecks formula would treat that game as if Seattle were a 39 DVOA team, when in reality Seattle's level of play at that point in the season was in the negatives. I think its best to just leave DVOA out of it since this is a large enough sample of data for the kinks to work themselves out.

Ammek's comments reek of twisting stats to push an agenda. It pisses me off that I can't sign up over there and point this out.

 

[seabowl]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Assuming you mean east coast teams traveling west and playing night games, absolutely but it also only happens about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling and playing 10am games.

The NFL has also already made an adjustment to help east coast teams by preventing them from having to play more than 2 west coast games in a season and in those events they don't have as large a disadvantage as west coast teams traveling east because they are playing 3 hours later than their regular starting time instead of 3 hours earlier. Yet the NFL completely ignored the west coast disadvantage of teams that typically travel up to 10 times as much in a season, have to play 3 hours earlier than their normal start time and make as many as 7 trips east with early starts in a season including playoffs like last year when we were required to play 2 back to back east coast games with early starts in the playoffs after playing 5 10am games in season.

Completely eliminating all early starts for west coast teams will likely never happen but if the NFL feels it is appropriate to modify the east coast schedules due to difficulty it should at very least, limit 10am starts for west coast teams to 2 a year max and never in the playoffs. That would be a much easier adjustment then what they did for east coast teams so why hasn't it happened?

I actually meant the start time of the game not travel. Prime time night games that start at 8:30pm eastern standard time, I would think would be tougher on a team from the eastern time zone rather than teams that reside in the pacific standard time zone. Now we know prime time night games will not go away but I'm curious how this affects est. teams when they are playing games almost if not past midnight in their time zone. Gaucho?

So your talking about west coast teams traveling east to play in prime time? That's a good question but I would bet it likely neutralizes the disadvantage the west coast team has from traveling cross country making the match essentially pretty even.

I would be curious if there is a large enough sample of those games and how they statistically play out though.

One more try here. East coast teams playing prime time games ANYWHERE in the country. The games regardless of where they are plated start around 8:30pm est. This is probably to the detriment of the east coast teams since the games are played during what is their nighttime hours.

 

[RichNhansom]

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Assuming you mean east coast teams traveling west and playing night games, absolutely but it also only happens about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling and playing 10am games.

The NFL has also already made an adjustment to help east coast teams by preventing them from having to play more than 2 west coast games in a season and in those events they don't have as large a disadvantage as west coast teams traveling east because they are playing 3 hours later than their regular starting time instead of 3 hours earlier. Yet the NFL completely ignored the west coast disadvantage of teams that typically travel up to 10 times as much in a season, have to play 3 hours earlier than their normal start time and make as many as 7 trips east with early starts in a season including playoffs like last year when we were required to play 2 back to back east coast games with early starts in the playoffs after playing 5 10am games in season.

Completely eliminating all early starts for west coast teams will likely never happen but if the NFL feels it is appropriate to modify the east coast schedules due to difficulty it should at very least, limit 10am starts for west coast teams to 2 a year max and never in the playoffs. That would be a much easier adjustment then what they did for east coast teams so why hasn't it happened?

I actually meant the start time of the game not travel. Prime time night games that start at 8:30pm eastern standard time, I would think would be tougher on a team from the eastern time zone rather than teams that reside in the pacific standard time zone. Now we know prime time night games will not go away but I'm curious how this affects est. teams when they are playing games almost if not past midnight in their time zone. Gaucho?

So your talking about west coast teams traveling east to play in prime time? That's a good question but I would bet it likely neutralizes the disadvantage the west coast team has from traveling cross country making the match essentially pretty even.

I would be curious if there is a large enough sample of those games and how they statistically play out though.

One more try here. East coast teams playing prime time games ANYWHERE in the country. The games regardless of where they are plated start around 8:30pm est. This is probably to the detriment of the east coast teams since the games are played during what is their nighttime hours.[/quote]


From your first comment.

I'm curious if a study has been done with east coast teams playing night games and what the results show. I would think playing a game starting at 8:30 est and ending at 11:30pm est favors west coast teams, no?

Sorry for the confusion. Your first comment (highlighted above) asked if those late night games might favor west coast teams so I guess I don't really understand where you are going with the question if you are referring to games not including west coast teams, why would that favor them?

East playing east would be no advantage or disadvantage since both teams are on the same schedule.

East playing at home vs west or even central is somewhat slightly even out due to travel.

East playing against west or central opponents on the road would likely be a huge disadvantage to east coast teams but again this happens probably about 5% as often as west coast teams traveling east and playing 10am games.

In fact the schedule set up by the NFL to help east coast teams prevents any east coast team from traveling more than twice a year to play on the west coast. As mentioned before.