Stadium size, ticket allotments and home field advantage in college football

Abstract

This study builds on a conceptual framework that explores of the relationship between relative fan attendance, stadium size and home field advantage in college football. We extend the conceptual model by providing empirical estimates of the impact that various ticket allotment arrangements and home stadium size have on the probability of winning in college football. The Auburn–Alabama rivalry (the “Iron Bowl”) provides a unique case given that the series has been played both at a neutral site with an equal division of tickets, as well as on a home-and-home basis with an uneven ticket split and nonuniform stadium capacities.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the The Social Science Journal Editor and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. The usual caveat applies.

Notes

1 Tuscaloosa is about 60 miles southwest of Birmingham, while Auburn is about is about 145 miles southeast of Birmingham (http://www.mapquest.com/). Hence, many Auburn fans held the view that the “neutral site” of Birmingham resembled more of a home site for Alabama.

2 For simplicity, Caudill and Mixon (1996) used a round figure of 11,000 to describe the visitor allotment for the series after the move away from the “neutral” playing site in the late 1980s. The current ticket allotment for visitors in games involving SEC home opponents is 9500 (http://www.ua.edu/; http://www.utsports.collegesports.com/). Visitors in the Alabama–Auburn series are, however, extended the courtesy of 10,500 tickets (http://www.ua.edu/). The statistical analysis in this paper uses the actual figure of 10,500. In other places where Caudill and Mixon (1996) used round figures, we will again use actual figures.

3 Caudill and Mixon (1996; p. 453) suggest that one would expect this relationship to exhibit diminishing returns—as the relative number of Auburn fans in attendance increases, p declines by ever smaller amounts—and that the probability should be bounded away from zero, even if all fans in the stands are Auburn supporters.

4 Caudill and Mixon's (1996; p. 455) study was written at the same time as planning/construction work on Legion Field, and it reports a post-expansion Legion Field capacity that (1) is about 3.5% larger than its actual post-expansion size, and (2) is larger than Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium. Our analysis corrects these details using historical data.

5 The NCAA has traditionally required teams to produce at least six regular season wins in order to participate in postseason bowl games.

6 The Notes to Tables 2 and 3 explain in more detail how A was constructed. Though the first ever Iron Bowl game played in Auburn occurred in 1989, there is no clear evidence as to whether the home-and-home arrangement began in 1988 or 1989. Caudill and Mixon (1996) indicate that the arrangement began in 1989. The initial date of the arrangement is not, however, important in the Caudill–Mixon presentation. Turner (2004; p. 1) presents conflicting statements on the date of initiation (supporting both 1988 and 1989), though Alabama's home game in 1988 is most likely the correct date, given the institution's political clout in the State. Finally, because our construction of A uses the initial ticket allocation to proxy relative fan attendance ratios, ln A may suffer measurement error due to the possibility that actual attendance ratios may differ from allocation ratios. We would argue that the intensity of the rivalry suggests our proxy is an adequate one. One alternative is the use of a binary variable representing the two ticket allocation regimes. However, replacing ln A with a binary variable would result in the loss of any/all information related to the effect of stadium size on p, further supporting our use of ln A.

7 Though the Iron Bowl has been played continuously since 1947, the data for our empirical model begin in 1974 in order to avoid some statistical issues. For example, two-platoon football did not make its final appearance in college football until 1965 (http://www.footballencyclopedia.com/). In order to avoid any regime effects, we begin our study after the 1965 re-appearance of two-platoon football had become firmly established. Similarly, our choice of 1974 avoids other potential regime-related statistical complications associated with the racial integration of college football in the South.

8 The LPM approach follows the Caudill and Mixon (1996) conceptual framework. Probit estimation of the model supports the results presented in Table 1.