CFB Home Teams Leading The Way: Will It Continue?

Five weeks are already in the rear view in the college football season. The season moves by very quickly! 

Home teams are 189-167 ATS (53.1% ATS) so far this season. Home favorites are 53.6% ATS so far this season. Home underdogs are 51.2% ATS on the season. Favorites have a 52.5%-47.5% ATS edge over underdogs thus far.

Will the home teams continue to cover at a high rate or will see regression to the mean the rest of the way? I would guess the latter will be coming as we move forward. If you go back 20 years with a sample size of about 15,000 games the road team has a 50.9% ATS cover rate in college football. Even in the very long term, the best four weeks for the home teams on an against the spread basis has been the first four weeks of the season. Road teams have been much better against the spread late in the season.

Road favorites late in the season have been very strong. In fact, road favorites of 14 points or more in game nine or later of the season are a little north of 56% ATS. We have a little ways to go before anyone reaches game nine, but it shows that road teams have often turned the tide when we get deeper into the season.

I still believe that home field advantage is a bit overvalued for quite a few college football teams. 

As a fun exercise- let’s see which teams have performed best ATS on the road in the last 20 years? Northern Illinois is 75-45 ATS on the road. Ball State is 77-47 ATS on the road. Ohio State is 55-34 ATS on the road. Vanderbilt is 63-42 ATS on the road. 

On the flip side- who are the worst teams ATS on the road? Colorado is a miserable 38-66 ATS on the road. USC is 45-64 ATS on the road. Kansas is 40-62 ATS on the road.

I look for regression to the mean and road teams to start covering the spread at a higher rate in college football overall.