The Playoffs: what do we really want out of home field advantage?

Competitively speaking, I would see very little opposition to this as compared to the dissent we currently have for home and away/lack of perceived award.

Besides the Lamar everyone has to have a home match thing, why do you suppose the league hasn't gone in this direction?

Ticket sales for the extra match?

 

Because your entire post-season would only be 7 games total and 3 weeks long (making it the smallest/shortest post-season in all of American sports). Limiting potential for revenue and/or exposure.

And because you give the top seeds (potentially) less time to sell tickets (they would have to sell tickets for week 1 of the playoffs, rather than week 2). Further limiting potential for revenue and/or exposure.

And because you would crown a champion based on their play in only 3 games (and this is only personal opinion, but that seems too trivial a number; too flukey and/or random - especially in a game like soccer).

 

And we know this because they advanced. Therefore, they were "better."

Oh, easily. DC and Chivas were the best teams I saw this year. DC (once they got it together) for how they just got it done and Chivas for the way they got it done, playing very attractive football.

We wouldn't know yet, because we'd still be playing it until after Thanksgiving.

 

Dude, we have this whole conversation every year.

 

yes, better in the post-season. in the regular season, not so much.

perhaps if there was a playoff system that truly handicapped those "lower seeded" teams and aided those "better teams from the regular season", then we could perhaps have a more accurate guage of which teams are better, or even "the best", as it would perhaps more accurately measure which teams were a combination of "good" over the course of the season, and "good enough" and playing "well enough" (over the shorter span of the playoffs) to win MLS Cup.

right now, the playoffs look to treat evey team equally, and there is no HF advantage in the first round H/A. the playoffs is a separate tournament (with a very level playing field in the first round) for the 8 teams that did "not awful" in the regular season. i'd like to see a playoff format that rewarded the "best" teams from the regular season with the greased skips, uneven scales, and true benefits of a real HF advantage gained by playing more post season games in the first round at home than the other, lower seeds.

i see the , but i'm going to post as if i'm ignoring it.

yes, if we wanted to add a week and play all the group stage matches on the weekend, then yes, MLS Cup would have been a few days after Thanksgiving (or a week and a half later, on 12/2).

but the Groups still would have wrapped up by 11/11.

or we could have shortened them down (of course depending on stadium availablility) to --

10/25: E1vE4, E2vE3

10/27: W1vW4, W2vW3

10/28: E1vE2, E3vE4

11/1: W1vW2, W3vW4

11/3: E1vE3, E2vE4

11/4: W1vW3, W2vW4


and the semi-finals and MLS Cup final could still have gone off on their scheduled dates in 2007.


(i'm sure there are other scheduling options, either for the regular season or the post season -- that would involve 15 games with a group stage -- that would not push MLS Cup back "too far" on the calendar.)

 

No, we couldn't. I'm a supporter of Group Stages, but you lose some of the biggest advantages of that format if you cram it into only two weeks. Everyone except the 1-seeds would have whiplash from all the travel, and you eliminate the extra time FOs would have to sell/market tickets to games (potentially, one of the biggest advantages to the system). Is extending the post season by a single week a deal breaker? If no, great. If yes, than Group Stages are out (in my opinion).

 

i'm not so sure the HF advantage is all that distinct in MLB, in a 7 game series (where one team would get an extra home game, but often the series does not go to 7 games so sometimes there are equal numbers of H and A games in a series), and over the course of a series that long, the better team has a chance to rise to the top, regardless of seeding and location of games.

i just don't see how MLB's post-season series structure, seven games (first to 4 games) and the nature of the sport are comparable to what MLS has ever done and what soccer is as a sport.

yes we would. although, i think it is a big assumption to imagine that the "HF reward in MLS" might turn "out to be less reward than the current system."

from the past 4 seasons in MLS, the only first round data we have available is data based on seeding. in the 180-minute H/A format, the "HF advantage" cancels itself out and it is not a measurable factor. (i don't approve of analyzing the two halves of a 180-minute series as if it were indeed two separate games. the tactics of playing a H/A total goals series is usually vastly different from playing what is (like it would be in the regular season) just two 90-minute games at each team's home venue.

 

exactly. shortening the group stage to less than 3 weeks is the worst option.

it "could" be done, but there's no real reason to do so. there are other weeks on the calendar and in the MLS schedule that could be found to allow 5 weeks for the MLS playoffs.

but if for some crazy reason, the group stage had to be fit into the "window" that the H/A first round used this year, I don't think the following schedule would have been "too awful", although it certainly isn't ideal and wouldn't be used if a 3rd weekend were readily available for the group stage:

10/25: E1vE4, E2vE3

10/27: W1vW4, W2vW3

10/28: E1vE2, E3vE4

11/1: W1vW2, W3vW4

11/3: E1vE3, E2vE4

11/4: W1vW3, W2vW4


East plays Thursday/Sunday/Saturday
West plays Saturday/Thursday/Sunday

(even though it's not ideal, and something else -- all weekends across three weeks -- should be used and the playoffs could easily be extended to 5 weeks imo, i'm pretty sure every team encountered a similarly "packed" 3-game schedule during the regular season in 2007. although the "unfair" travel and ticket-selling concerns for the playoffs are a major issue you are correct to note.)

 

Has anyone analyzed what the impact would have been historically if they stuck with a two-leg home.v.home, but gave the "road goal" benefit only to the higher seeded team in the case of a tie on points?

I like the system the way it is, but such a modification might tip things a little more towards the home team without over-doing it.

 

And a difference that makes no difference is no difference at all.

Then again, we have no idea how things would have played out if both teams knew going in that the format was different. Applying it retroactively is kinda misleading.

Near as I can tell, there have been 413 regular-season NFL games that have gone to overtime since 1973.

Home teams are 202-188-23 (.517)

Remember (as far too many people reminded us in 2002, when there was a run of them), there is an advantage to getting the ball first in overtime in the NFL. There's no such advantage to winning the toss in soccer that I'm aware of. It's not as big an advantage as Jim Nantz and some other namby-pambies would have had you believe (i.e., you win the toss, you win the game, therefore let's change the system), but there is a slight advantage and you can't ignore that difference between MLS and the NFL.

Plus, there's sudden death. "Shortening the game" by making it "first to score" would seem, to me, to seriously mitigate the advantage that you normally get for playing an entire game at home and getting to recover from mistakes or from giving up scores. So it doesn't surprise me that the NFL OT home field advantage is much lower than the overall NFL home field advantage.

 

It would have changed in both Dallas-Rapids matches as FCD was the higher seed in each tied aggregate match up.

So if you adjust the first round numbers it works out to: 3/16 =81% advancment not 69% till 2006


Or if you count last night too = 4/17 = 76% vs 6/17 =65%

EDIT: I thought he was talking about the FMF rule sorry but the numbers above are correct for that assumption

 

I did a little more looking at the numbers. Out of 17 completed first-round series, 7 of them had a lower-seeded team whose season point total was above the league average for the year, while the other 10 had a below average record.

Record for higher-seeded team with above-average opponent: 4-3, 1.21 ppg
Record for higher-seeded team with below-average opponent: 7-3, 1.7 ppg

This would indicate that whatever advantage there is from higher seeding is diminished when the opponent is not all that bad.


Now for some counterintuitive numbers:

In 8 completed series, the regular season point margin between the opponents was 5 or lower. In the other 9, the margin was 11 or higher. (No series had a margin in the 6-10 range.)

Record for higher seeded team with 0-5 pt. margin over opponent: 6-2, 1.63 ppg
Record for higher seeded team with 11+ pt. margin over opponent: 5-4, 1.39 ppg

So the greater the gap between the opponent's regular season records, the more often the lower seed pulled the upset.

 

Which is what it should do. Which is what we should be striving for.

You mean how many times the home team wins game 7 in those situations? I think it's really, really big. IF you get to game 7.

But there are a lot more data points in those samples than the "if you get to series OT or PKs in the MLS playoffs."

97 NBA playoff game 7s. Home teams are 78-19 (.804)

 

Which is intuitive. Any advantage you might have is diminished when your opponent is not all that bad.

 

120 NHL playoff Game 7s.

Home teams are 75-45 (.625)

 

Yeah the weirdest stat in the FMF thing i did, was that the #1 seed is the most often upset seedi in their first round H/A.

Its almost like its random how the #1 seed will respond to being top dog. They have won the league and advanded to the final and lost overall more than anyone, but they are also the most likey seed to be upset in the first round. Weird.

 

And 49 Major League Baseball game 7s.

Home teams are 27-22. Go figure. Baseball home field advantage has historically been 55%. 27-22 is .551.

 

On the other hand, the home team has won 8 consecutive World Series game 7's, and the team with home field advantage is 18-4 in the World Series since 1985. Small samples or new trends?