Late-Game Reversals in Professional Basketball, Football, and Hockey

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that in basketball, football, and hockey, the leader at the beginning of the final period (quarter or period) wins the game about 80% of the time. We discuss modeling of late-game reversals in NBA, NFL, and NHL sports. The models are built around the assumptions that basketball scores and football scores are normally distributed and hockey scores vary according to a Poisson distribution. The models also accommodate the proverbial home field advantage. We use data from the 1997–1998 regular seasons of the leagues to estimate the parameters for the models. Predictions from the probabilistic models are in excellent agreement with the actual outcomes.

Key Words:

• Goodness-of-fit
• Normal distribution
• Poisson distribution
• Sports data