NFL's 10 A.M. Games: More Important Than Home-Field Advantage

I wrote an article a few months back talking about West Coast teams playing at 10 a.m. and the massive disadvantage of doing so.

In talking to different people, the subject came up as to if there is any variable that correlates so highly between a difference in win percentage.

Put more plainly, is there anything that has as high of a discrepancy as the nearly 11 percent of West Coast teams playing games at 10 a.m. PST?

The first thought that came to mind was to look at the statistics of home-field advantage.

In the 2010 NFL season, so far all NFL teams have gone a combined 124-100 at home. However, that doesn't account for the effect of playing at home for each individual team.

It ignores a team like the Chicago Bears, who are 4-3 at home but 6-1 on the road. It also ignores a team like the 49ers who are 4-3 at home, but 1-6 on the road.

So what I did was to calculate each team's individual road and home win percentages, then find the difference, and take the average.

Rather than looking at an overall home win record, I calculated the average discrepancy between home and road performance for all NFL teams.

In 2010, it's 12 percent.

This means the average team's win percentage goes down 12 percent on the road.

Looking at my previous article regarding 10 a.m. games, we can do the same calculation. Between 2005 and 2009, Western teams playing at home went a combined 133-107. That's a 55 percent win percentage.

On the road at 10 a.m., that drops to 35.56%, dipping nearly 20%, as opposed to the 12% average calculated from 2010.

If you're a betting man, that means you'll always want to bet on the Eastern team in a 10 a.m. game. These numbers show that Western teams playing at 10 a.m. have a massive disadvantage that is even more important than home-field advantage.