Toughest Road Trip In The SEC
by Poseur on Aug 9, 2009 12:51 PM CDT
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PrintThe gauntlet was thrown down regarding home field advantage in an earlier thread, so as promised, I've run the numbers regarding the home field. First things first, I only counted conference games. This is to try and at least make some attempt to normalize the schedules because let's face it, I don't want to reward teams for playing and beating Louisiana Tech (no offense, Bulldogs fans).
This did lead to one problem. While every team in the SEC plays an eight game schedule, Florida and Georgia play a neutral site game every year you might have heard of. It's not a big deal, but essentially Florida and Georgia lose a home game every other year. Also, Arkansas essentially has two home stadiums and I count games in Little Rock as home games for the Hogs, same with Birmingham and Alabama. I also wanted to take a bit of a long view, so I took the last ten years of games. Here are each SEC team's home wins over the past ten seasons:
LSU 28
Florida 27
Tennessee 27
Georgia 26
Auburn 26
Alabama 25
Arkansas 22
Ole Miss 18
Mississippi St 17
South Carolina 16
Kentucky 11
Vanderbilt 7
Hey, Geaux Tigers! But this really doesn't tell us a whole bunch other than LSU and Florida have been really good over the past ten years. So, while LSU can argue it has the best homefield advantage based on total wins, it's not an argument I'm comfortable making. Good teams win a lot of games, home or road. The real advantage is how a team plays at home compared to on the road.
This has the advantage of seeing how a team plays at home without giving an advantage to teams that are simply really good on home and on the road. We're looking to see if there is a home field advantage, not who are the best teams in the SEC. The advantage I'm looking for is how many wins is home field worth? So, I compared home wins to road wins over the past ten years. The list then looks completely different than the one above.
Mississippi St +11
Arkansas +6
LSU +5
Alabama +4
Ole Miss +3
Florida +2
Tennessee +1
Auburn +1
Kentucky +1
South Carolina 0
Vanderbilt -1
Georgia -1
Now we're talking! That is some fun results, and nothing like anyone expected. Mississippi St is the toughest homefield in the SEC? Because I know how we always tremble in fear of that biannual trip to Starkville. Well, LSU is the wrong team to ask given our total domination of Mississippi State over the past twenty years, but ask Florida about going to Stark Vegas.
But a lot of this is how terrible Mississippi State has been on the road. The Bulldogs went five years without winning an SEC road game and have won a grand total of 6 games in 10 years on the road. But even when Mississippi State was good (remember those days?), the Bulldogs won a game more at home than on the road each season. Still, I don't want to reward a team for simply being awful on the road. No team has won less games on the road in the SEC over the past ten years than Mississippi State, not even Vanderbilt. That's more of a road field disadvantage.
So, in order to get what we were looking for in the first place, I combined the two lists. I took a team's total home wins over the past ten years and then added their margin of home wins over road wins. This gets a team who wins a lot but also wins a lot in comparison to winning on the road. Here is the adjusted list:
LSU 33
Florida 29
Alabama 29
Tennessee 28
Mississippi State 28
Arkansas 28
Auburn 27
Georgia 25
Ole Miss 21
South Carolina 16
Kentucky 12
Vanderbilt 6
The loving cofines of Death Valley rank #1 again, as LSU does well on both lists: total wins and margin of home wins to road wins. I think we can fairly call Tiger Stadium the toughest road trip in the SEC, not that going to the Swamp, or anywhere in the conference, is a cakewalk.
I'd like to point out just how many teams are clustered at the top of this list. Is there any real difference between Florida and Auburn? Not really. There is an advantage to playing at home, as almost all teams win slightly more at home than they do on the road, but the advantage is not as large as I thought it would be, to be honest. Only three schools (MSU, Arkansas, and LSU) have a homefield worth a half game or more per year than playing on the road. And of those three, only LSU ranks in the top half of the SEC in total home wins.
Which is why Death Valley lives up to its nickname.
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Aw, shucks
I’m not proud of the writing, which is pretty half-assed. But I liked the research. I forgot who suggested this project, but I hope you know that you ruined my weekend.
I apologize
when I asked about the true value of home field, I was mostly curious about why everyone was giving Ole Miss credit for having their toughest games at home when their home field doesn’t seem that intimidating. I guess the answer is not so much that their home field is intimidating, but that they get to avoid other fields that are…i.e., Death Valley.
Excellent article. Thanks.
by Displaced Tiger on Aug 9, 2009 10:17 PM CDT up reply actions
Great Chart
With a few of my friends, I traveled to all the SEC schools over the last 29 years. This year will be our 30th trip and its to Auburn. Were Kentucky fans, and thanks I understand your concern. Its an annual thing I would recommend doing to all of you. Due to sickness and a wedding we have never been to Arkansas. We’ve seen 29 games and saw the Cats win 4 times. Two at Vandy and two at South Carolina.
My choices and the best atmosphere and fan participation.
1 LSU – intimidating. That’s all that I need to say.
2 Tennessee – not the best place to be an opposing fan but they do get excited.
3 Alabama – any time you get amongst 93,000 fans singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ its empressive.
4.Georgia – Pre game with all the old clips on the scoreboard. heck, their dawg will even bite opposing players!
5.Auburn – a little calmer than those listed above but still a great place to watch the game. Love the eagle.
7.South Carolina – The cabooses are neat. A little out of my price range but nice. FAns good to us. Even if we win.
8. Kentucky – hey, I’ve got to admit the games at night, after a cook out or going to the races are great.
9. Miss State – small town, I would have loved to have gone to a game when Archie was playing.
10. Ole Miss – the year we went it was in Jackson. Bare, cold atmosphere. State fair was going on. Fun.
11. Vandy – never been there when it wasn’t cold a hell. Small stadium but I bet the partying is fun when they win.
Sorry, I can’t comment on Arkansas.
The twenty nine years of trips is somehing I’ll remember forever. We play golf, sit around and talke about how good the Cats will be ‘next year’ and the friendships make it wonderful.
Just my thoughts on the subject.
Where's Florida?
They arent even on your list. This would be my list:
1. LSU-the fans are absolutely rabid, and there’s just something about night games there.
2. Florida-see above, the fans are crazy, but I think too much winning might make them calm down. If you don’t agree with my logic look at USC, they’ve lost part of their edge.
3. Alabama-our fans are incredible (wait until we close the South Endzone).
4. Tennessee-largest stadium in the SEC, and once again, great fans.
5. Georgia-large crowds+National Championship Hunger=Tough Place to play
6. Auburn-another group of great SEC fans. The plains just seem a little more laid back, except when Alabama is in town.
7. Arkansas-solid group of SEC fans.
8. Miss State-cowbells can be deadly.
9. Ole Miss-Great party school=wild fans. It’s too bad they only seats 60,000.
10. South Carolina-I think these fans are actually very good, but let’s be honest, South Carolina doesn’t have the tradition that most SEC schools have.
11. Kentucky-the basketball fans are awesome. Where are half of them?
12. Vandy-well, it’s vandy. If you saw the 2007 Alabama-Vandy game you would know what I mean.
Any of these schools, except vandy, could be in the top 25 toughest places to play. Heck, the top 6 SEC schools probably make up most of the top ten.
36-0
Posuer
That took a lot of work. Ain’t you got something else to do on a Sunday afternoon?
Seriously, it was very informative and in my opinion, pretty much right on the button.
Florida!
Guess I went brain dead about them.
The Cats are usually out of it by the end of the first quarter so I must have blocked my memories of the place.
Great fans, always hot as hell. I’ve never felt the atmosphere there though that I found at some of the other places. Parking for the out of towners is terrible.
Put them in the No 6 position, which I left out.
Thanks for the response. Its good to see how fans from other schools view the stadiums and fans.
Interesting stuff
As a lifelong Georgia fan, I have always been bothered by the fact that Sanford Stadium isn’t a tougher place to play than it is. Part of that is the configuration of the stadium and the limiting factor of the bridge at the west end, but, frankly, we as fans aren’t as loud as folks at some other SEC arenas . . . although the addition of things like the Dawg Walk, the “Battle Hymn” soloist, and the pregame scoreboard montage have added to the atmosphere.
On the flipside, one reason Georgia doesn’t rate higher on this list is that the Red and Black are an exceptionally good road team under Mark Richt. In that sense, the Eastern Division Bulldogs are the antithesis of the Western Division Bulldogs: Georgia may appear less good at home merely because the Classic City Canines are so good on the road.
In any case, it’s an interesting posting. Well done.
Go 'Dawgs!
Sanford Stadium is great
It’s a beautiful stadium and I love that you can still walk all the way down to the field (behind the fence of course) to circle the stadium.
I think one recent item that limits the UGA gameday image is that the school seemed to turn ant-tailgate several years ago. No parking on sidewalks, streets, etc. They force you to park in decks, most of which are reserved pass parking only. I think that decreases what is otherwise a fantastic tailgating campus. Oh yeah, that and the cops don’t tend to overlook open-container laws on gamedays like they do everywhere else.
I have been to 8 of the 12 SEC campuses for games so far and I am looking forward to adding Lexington to my list this fall. I am looking forward to seeing what y’all have up there Parisguy, and any suggestions from you for enhancing our UK gameday experience would be most appreciated.
SKIGATOR
If its a night game that means the races are going on at Keeneland. I’ve only be a few times my self but the blue bloods make it a part of their day.
Around the stadium its as dead as Vandy.
If you come up a day or two before the game and play golf, try to get on at the Marriot Golf course. It next to the hotel, not too hard and the leaves will be changing. Really pretty. If that’s not you game, you might try going to one of the horse farms. The horses have stalls that are better than the average person’s home. Try to make arrangements to do so before you come up.
They closed the University of Kentucky Basketball Hall of Fame, can you believe that?
Some good places to eat. Just ask around.
It should be a nice trip for you.
it's a big deal that UGA and UF each lose that home game
I know you mentioned it. But that means UGA and UF each played 5 fewer home games during the decade. If UF has 5 fewer attempts and 1 fewer, win they have the #1 winning percentage.
Adjusted for actual number of SEC home games….
UF’s is .771
UGA’s percentage is .743
LSU’s is .700
A very good point
Every team has 40 games in this study except UF and UGa, who each have 35. That’s 12.5% less. I’m not sure the best way to account for that, but I do believe that it is an error NOT to account for it. This is sort of back of the envelope math and I’m trying to keep things simple.
But I think any adjustment will probably move Florida to #1 as the toughest venue. Maybe I should multiply their result by 1.125 to account for the loss of the home game. LSU ranking #1, however, kind of misses the point: there really isn’t a huge discernable homefield advantage at any school. The advantage is slight, and the top schools are all pretty clustered together. There’s no real difference in going to LSU or going to Georgia. Both roadtrips will suck for the travelling team, as they will play a really good team in front of some really hostile fans.
GOOD STUFF!!
Honestly I was suprised when I went to Mississippi State in 2007 for the State LSU game. For the amount of people they have and the amount of games they had lost before that season IT WAS A LOUD CROWD. Not death valley loud but for 55000 fans the stands were shaking when they ran out on the field. here is my list
1.LSU of course
2.FLORIDA been there twice crazy people loud that stadium is like a can it holds sound in.
3.TENN with over 100000 people how can it not be loud.
4.UGA good fans there
5.MSU shocking I know, but those small town folk love their Bulldog football. Cowbells will give you an earache too.
6.ARKANSAS I dont like putting them this high, but going to a game there is a little scary. It reminds me of the movie “The Deliverance” haha “you got a perty mouth boiy”
7. AUBURN when 80000 people chant War Eagle It kinda gives you that chilling feeling you know.
8.USC ok crowd not much goin on there though no traditions.
9.UK its a basketball school cant expect much more than that. Nice people though.
10.ALABAMA the times I have been there I was not at all impressed. That many people should be thunderous but it wasnt. The only thing they have is Bear Bryant and you would think that he was their mascot. NOT LOUD AT ALL. (btw when you hear “Sweet Home Alabama” after every ball posession the song starts to SUCK!!!)
11.OM those fans are super stuck up and are kinda rude. Not as loud as you would like an SEC game to be. The grove is fun and great parties too. Has great tradition and a really nice town.
12.VANDY oh man… It is a nice school and has really nice fans, and if the dores’ get a td they can get a little rowdy with a roar, but its just not me. Vandy will always be that team in the SEC that everyone loves. They are like a cute puppy haha joking.
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