norm wrote:
My rough understanding is that stadium does play a (probably small) role in home field advantage. And the stadium size is part of it. That is, the "crowd noise" factor is affected by attendance and stadium size. If you have a 100,000 seat stadium with 50,000 attendance, your crowd noise is less than a 50,000 seat stadium with 50,000 attendance. Of course the bigger stadium has the advantage, if you can fill it, with a 65,000 out of 65,000 attendance being louder than a 50,000 with 50,000.
I don't know about the turf. I know the weather is a factor, but honestly, because you can't game plan for it, it seems like a non-factor for the most part. I've played games in below freezing temps (again which you don't know about until after the game) and just run normal offense with no problem.
Yes, I figured that both weather and stadium attributes were mostly cosmetic and nothing you could really gameplan for. I played a game in another league last night with *FIFTY* MPH winds, but the other team had no problem completing long passes. (I lost)
I agree that the attendance probably makes a little bit more of an actual difference. A nearly full stadium could cause low discipline visiting o linemen to get false starts, etc. Plus, higher attendance when your team is winning (regardless of capacity?) gives you more cash to hire better coaches and keep improving. I didn't want to use any credits to change the stadium, but was just thinking if you knew "hey, I've got artificial turf, I should focus on getting high acceleration and ball carrying players" or whatever it could help.