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The "CAKI" complex

A strange trend amongst teams in the middle (6-26) of the league. By Fabrizzio Sanchez

We discovered the "CAKI" trend when we first started compiling data for our prediction types. We randomly chose to begin working on games where we had picked the road team to win. As we went through the results, the numbers came out showing that as a team became favored by more points, its winning percentage also went up, which is what we expected. For the first category, where the road team is favored by 0-2 points, the winning percentage came out at sixty percent, and it maintained about a two percent jump for each category up to the last where a road team favored by 19 or more points had a win percentage of sixty-eight percent.

Encouraged by these results we quickly moved on to games where we had picked the home team to win, expecting to find a similar or even stronger trend since we were now dealing with teams that had home field advantage. Our calculations didn’t get very far before we encountered puzzling results. Home teams favored by 0-2 points were winning at an eighty-one percent clip, a very high rate. The next level, home teams favored by 3-6 points, had the same jump as the road teams did, moving up to eighty-three percent. Before we decided to divide up the prediction types by point amount we knew that home teams were winning at an overall rate of seventy-eight percent. Was something wrong with our program? Obviously from here the winning percentage had to go down, so how could it be that teams favored by 6 or less points at home won more often than those favored by 7 or more at home?

Here is how the numbers finished coming out:

• Home team by 0-2: 81%
• Home team by 3-6: 83%
• Home team by 7-10: 71%
• Home team by 11-14: 69%
• Home team by 15-18: 76%
• Home team by 19+: 88%

After some serious thought, we decided that getting an overall win percentage of seventy-eight percent was fundamentally solid, and after all the road team numbers made sense. We decided to start looking in depth at all the games where the program had picked home teams to win by between 7-14 points. After a few days of reviewing box scores and game recaps something started to stand out to us. Home field advantage was disappearing from these favored teams.

The picture began to paint itself like this. Leading up to a game, teams study their opponents by going over their style, personnel, and tendencies. Throughout this they develop a pretty good feel as to where they stand on paper against their opponent. Then they likely hear from friends, media, and fans as to where they stand on paper. When game time comes, they walk on to their home field knowing that they are viewed as a 4 point underdog, or as in our case study a touchdown or more favorite. The other team knows, the crowd knows, and they feel the win before the game even starts.

A quarter will go by, another, and at halftime the road underdog is still in the game, or even winning. Still the home team favorite believes they have the win, all they need to do is play their game. The crowd still believes too. Somewhere in the third quarter things begin to fall apart. Maybe it starts with a botched play, or a teammate losing his cool. The crowd gets nervous and quiet. Pressure builds on the home team, understanding that their fans expected them to win. The coaches know this as well, and press the team further. At this point home field advantage has disappeared, and now they have become the road team playing beneath a frustrated if not hostile crowd. Even though they were favored by as much as two touchdowns, the home team lacked the confidence and killer instinct needed to win a close game at home.

Confidence and killer instinct. This is what was causing home teams to perform worse the more they became favored over their opponent. Well coached teams and teams with strong on the field leaders had the mental psyche to avoid falling into the trap of being a heavy favorite at home. Those that did not failed to take advantage of opportunities to put the game away early, and then when 'home field advantage' became 'home field pressure' they buckled and lost games they should be winning. The more we broke it down, the more this "CAKI" complex made sense. We labeled it as a complex affecting a large middle portion of the league since teams ranked lower than 26th were rarely favored by more than a touchdown even at home, and the top five teams seemed immune to allowing the turn of the crowd to affect them. The top teams didn’t think they were the better team, they knew it and when the opportunity presented itself they would take advantage in home game after home game and seal the win.

It even explained why home teams favored by 6 or fewer points won over eighty percent of the time. They never got it in their heads that they were heavy favorites to win, more likely all week they prepared for a tough game that they needed to win at home. The crowd wasn’t expecting a win either, and when it came to crunch time they were more motivated, cheering and pulling for their team to pull out this difficult victory. No more hostile and frustrated fans. We lost count how many times we would read a quote from a player that said “…we knew it would be a tough game, but when the crowd got behind us it gave us that extra push we needed.”

The picture became complete when we analyzed the final two categories where the home team was favored by more than two touchdowns. Wouldn’t it be even worse for a team to know it was favored by so much? That would make sense psychologically, but physically on the field teams favored by more than 14 points were just so much more fundamentally sound that they often blew their opponents out by the third quarter. Or their opponents were so poor that they were unable to take advantage in close games when the home team and home crowd lost their confidence. Hence the rise back to seventy-six percent in the 15-18 category and the big rise to eighty-eight percent in the 19+ category.

One final note we’d like to make. It’s unlikely that teams have seen our specific numbers while preparing for games week to week. Also, while we may have a team as a 12 point favorite, the common line has them as a 5 point favorite. Or vice versa where we have a team as an 8 point favorite and the common line has them as a 15 point favorite. As would make sense, the "CAKI" complex showed up most often when the common line closely matched our line. Every team and every game have enough uniqueness that it would be wrong to generalize on when the "CAKI" complex shows up in the common line. All we can say is that we know our numbers and trust them. So the next time you see your favorite team is playing at home and favored by close two touchdowns, take it with a grain of salt. They may just be setting themselves and the crowd up for a psychological meltdown.

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