617 – Statistical Methods for Questions in Football
Association of Domed Stadium to Winning NFL Games
Masaru Teramoto
Drexel University
Chad L. Cross
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Several teams in the National Football League (NFL) play their home games in domed stadiums. Because of the rarity of a domed stadium, these teams may have advantages when playing at home. Meanwhile, they may have disadvantages when playing away from home due to unfamiliarity with playing outside. The aim of this study is to examine whether type of home stadium is associated with winning the NFL games at home and away from home. Winning percentages at home and away from home for each NFL team in the past five NFL regular seasons were analyzed based on type of home stadium (domed vs. outdoor) by using a rank regression analysis, while adjusting for quality of offense and defense as well as strength of schedule. The results revealed that playing in a domed stadium at home did not appear to provide significant advantages in terms of winning NFL games. On the other hand, the teams with domed home stadiums won significantly fewer games away from home than did the teams with outdoor home stadiums (p < 0.05). These results suggest that the teams that play in domed stadiums at home may need extra preparation for the game when playing in outdoor stadiums away from home.