Home field advantage

[Bob Davis]

By "new rules for review" do you mean that you will try the new rules for a season and then reevaluate whether or not make the rules permanent? Considering new rules has been a fun part of my electric football experience. Could you share the playoff bracket and scores for Season 18? I for one would enjoy seeing that. 

[Curt]

Howdy Bob, yes, I will try the new rules for a season or as many games as it takes to determine if any of the new rules should be permanent. Perhaps an example is one "rule" I already know I will not use for home-field advantage, is providing a better set of bases for my home team. I have enough bases to load [a little more than] 3 full games. I try to make all my bases run as straight and far as possible and allow tweaking only with timeouts. However, to try and eliminate personal bias to any team on any given game day, I shuffle the bases quite often and whatever "set" a team gets, well, they have that set for that game. Does that make sense? Now let's explore this further. Let's say I get to the end of the regular season for season 19 and have not yet decided upon the fate of a particular rule. I will not use that rule during the post season for season 19 and will revisit that rule in season 20 until a decision can be made whether or not it will become permanent. I feel like I'm beginning to ramble but cannot think of anything else to clarify this. Does that help at all though? Now then on to your next question, what does my season 18 playoff structure look like so far? Ok, here goes, trying to make it as clear as possible:

My 11th place division winner Oakland Raiders beat my Wildcard [best of 2nd place division teams] Seattle Seahawks 14 to 6 to face my 4th place division winner Green Bay Packers.

My 10th place division winner Cleveland Browns beat my 9th place division winner Kansas City Chiefs 13 to 0 to face my 3rd place division winner Minnesota Vikings.

My 7th place division winner Indianapolis Colts beat my 8th place division winner Tampa Bay Buccaneers 18 to 0 to face my 2nd place division winner Houston Texans.

My 5th place division winner Dallas Cowboys beat my 6th place division winner Buffalo Bills 15 to 10 to face my 1st place division winner [Top of the League] New York Giants.

My Oakland Raiders beat my Green Bay Packers 28 to 13 to face my Minnesota Vikings.

My Minnesota Vikings beat my Cleveland Browns 24 to 23 to face my Oakland Raiders.

My Houston Texans beat my Indianapolis Colts 31 to 29 to face my New York Giants.

My New York Giants beat my Dallas Cowboys 26 to 22 to face my Houston Texans.

My Minnesota Vikings beat my Oakland Raiders 13 to 8 to face my New York Giants.

My New York Giants beat my Houston Texans 21 to 16 to face my Minnesota Vikings.

I am now 2:33 into the 3rd quarter of Superbowl 18 and my New York Giants have a 1st and 10 on their own 30-yard line. They trail my Minnesota Vikings 12 to 8 but there is still a lot of football to be played for Superbowl 18 and I have seen bigger comebacks than this so we shall have to wait and see what happens. Hopefully, this is sufficient to answer your question. Hope I didn't ramble too much or waste anyone's time and that everyone enjoyed it. Blessings to all, Curt

[Bob Davis]

Thank you, Curt for the explanation of your rules process and the playoff scores and brackets. I notice the games got a lot closer after the first round! Sounds like the defenses are asserting themselves in the Super Bowl so far. Look forward to hearing who won! Enjoy.

[Curt]

You are most welcome, anytime, sir. Yeah, it is great to see how things just turn out. I enjoy heavy defensive games as much as high scoring offensive games. I agree with you about this being a fairly assertive defensive game. Looking forward to how this game would turn out kept me up tonight so it just had to be finished. It is almost 2:00 a.m. here in Dallas, Texas. The New York Giants pushed through for one more touchdown and a 2-point conversion, stealing Superbowl 18 from my Minnesota Vikings with a 16-12 victory. 🙂 My brother, a lifetime Vikings fan, will probably not be thrilled. Oh well, that's the beauty of Electric Football. You just never know what will happen next. Let it never be said that life is boring! On to season 19, yeah! Blessings to everyone and good night from Texas ya'll, Curt

[Bob Davis]

Congrats to the Giants!

 

[Curt]

Thanks for that. Now comes the task of exploring new rules, how fun! I went through all the entries in this thread and copied every suggestion into Notepad as they appeared in order. Wow, what an incredibly long list! I thought I might list them here and then make entries for each rule as they "pass or fail" but that would be way too long of an entry. Now as games proceed, those which may not work for me may be left out and those that make sense for me will remain. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions. Please do not take anything personally if I do not incorporate one of your suggestions. I am trying to find out what will work for me.  How long it will take is unknown. This all boils down to "My game, my rules, my weirdness". You have to find what works best for you. My review criteria come from all the following suggestions given in this thread, including my own:

By "new rules for review" do you mean that you will try the new rules for a season and then reevaluate whether or not make the rules permanent?

Let's say I get to the end of the regular season for season 19 and have not yet decided upon the fate of a particular rule. I will not use that rule during the post season for season 19 and will revisit that rule in season 20 until a decision can be made whether or not it will become permanent.

I plan to try out all suggestions in my season 19 and whittle them down to a good balance which will take some serious time.

Plans are to start the first game with all of the aforementioned disadvantages for visitors and then for as many games as needed, slowly weed out and sort them to create the best acceptable balance for future games with the best home-field advantage as possible. Does that make sense? So, regrettably, it may take quite a long while to find the right combination of allowances for games with realistic home-field advantages, sorry.

A lot of good ideas in this thread. Not sure I’d appreciate being the visiting team if ALL of them were implemented though.

This has been a good thread with a good variety of ideas presented. Certainly some ideas would have a larger impact than others.

Yes, I expect home teams to win often but that is part of and hopefully the quickest part of the process to find what make sense for me.

I wonder though if by providing any of the advantages listed for the ENTIRE GAME gives the home team TOO MUCH of an advantage. Perhaps trying it for a season and recording how often the home team wins vs the road team and comparing those stats with actual NFL stats would provide a good indicator as to whether the rule is fair or not. Just some thoughts. 

I want to make as quick a work of the process as possible so I plan on reviewing the rule used with each play it was used on and record, based on results, whether or not it was too successful to keep, not useful enough to keep, or perhaps some type of an adjustment needs to be considered. I do not intend to incorporate NFL stats into this though as it is ultimately just for my Electric Football League. Does that make sense? Of course, I welcome any feedback at any time. You will not ruffle my feathers. I hope I do not ruffle anyone else's feathers.

[Curt]

Ok, exploring Home Field Advantage Ideas from its original question:

Does anyone give the home team any kind of advantage, or just play the game normally. I’m thinking of using one of these:
giving the home team a 3 point lead to start   For my league [as every review will be], all points must be earned so I'm planning on not using this one.
giving them the second half kick off and possession at the opponents 25      Coin toss and touchback starts at the 20 are remaining rules.
two attempts at field goals I allow field goals from anywhere and count as regular downs too[so ex if FG is called on 1st down, 4 attempts are allowed to make it but I like and will test 2 attempts for the home team on 4th down FG's.

two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards.  I'm going to have to try that one out.

one team automatically wins the coin toss to start the game.   Coin Toss will remain as heads for home team and tails for visitor team.

home team gets an extra pivot.
home team gets extra timeouts. T I have set formations already and allow tweaks with timeouts so I think I'll leave it at that.

The home team gets the ball first. I'm leaving Coin Toss as it is.

each team has its own actual field, so there's a natural home field advantage in sense that you get to know the quirks of your own board much better. I only use my Ultimate sized board so I can't try this one out.

removing one audible from the visiting team’s offense simulating home crowd noise. 

 How about a five yard false start penalty against the visiting team at a point in the game of the home team's choosing? 

You can give your home team a larger amount of bases that run longer than your visitors for somewhat of an advantage. In the spirit of trying to remove as much personal control from the game as possible, I'm going to pass on these.

to foster home field advantage, you can round up half yards for your home team and your visitors will just be out of luck.

Official NFL and EFL rules allow a touchdown to be awarded if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. I require a ball carrier to break the plane of the end zone. Official NFL and EFL rules can be applied to just the home team here and your visitors can follow "my" rule for touchdowns [safeties, and first downs too]to elicit another slight home field advantage.  I'm going to test these out.

Your idea to give the home team the benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays is very intriguing.

I also like the home team getting benefit of the doubt--great idea. Definitely testing this one out. 

"I think I will have to back up the 2 point conversion next season.  It was too easy to get it from the 2 yard line". 
"A lot of coaches, including myself, do this from the 5 yard line." 
Here's yet another late thought regarding 2-point conversions. I really don't pay attention to my success rate and mine are made from the 2-yard line. But, if it really is easier from the 2-yard line than from the 5-yard line, you might consider this. To further promote home field advantage, your home team can attempt their 2-point conversions from the 2-yard line and your visiting team would have to attempt theirs from the 5-yard line. Does that make sense? Yup, testing this one. 

Since I only used a limited number of bases last year, I gave the home team first picks on the best bases. I shuffle bases too often to apply this one.

AKA 'the electric slide". It is a common practice in electric football to give the ball carrier the yardage gained after the switch is turned off. I play a form of "forward progress" where the ball carrier is not down until his forward progress has been stopped. If you wanted to give the home team an advantage, then have the home team use forward progress and the visiting team play by any touch tackling. Definitely trying this one out. 🙂 

 

 Now this would take some serious experimentation to foster a "reasonable" home field advantage. Once the desirable vibration level is found, the better of the vibration levels could be used for the home team when they are on offense and a slightly lesser vibration level could be used for the visiting team when they are on offense. Does that make sense?

Re: field speed idea—how about that reflecting “momentum” instead of home field?  Like, after an interception in a one-score game, board gets turned to the better speed.  Forcing a quick 3 & out.  And after a long go-ahead TD drive, board gets turned down for the following return and offensive series? I'm wavering with this one in that I wonder if it might be too difficult to find the right settings but I really like the forced momentum idea so I have not discounted it yet but I'll try it out to see how well I can make it work.

This has been a good thread with a good variety of ideas presented. Certainly some ideas would have a larger impact than others.  
Which adds a further development into the mix.  That being the notion to give each team a “home field advantage” rule unique to that team. This is very intriguing especially since I have 33 teams. It might be easier to achieve this with a smaller league. I try not to play favorites with my teams either and the temptation to favor a particular team with a particular advantage could creep up and bite me. I think I'll experiment with these a while and see if this could apply to my league, thanks.

I noticed sometimes a ball carrier starts to veer on a wide arc and although forward progress may be stopped at any time to avoid yardage loss, a yard may be lost by the time the power is shut off and he actually comes to a complete stop if that makes sense? So, I'm going to "test" giving the home team the furthest yard gained and the visitor the actual stopping point, similar to what nefgm.org calls electric slide. I love that term. 🙂 My second home-field advantage test is also related to electric slide. In my most recent games, I noticed that sometimes the electric slide takes my quarterback over the line of scrimmage. As it has been and will be for Superbowl 18, once past the line of scrimmage, a pass is no longer an option. However, I'm going to allow the home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down. Does that make sense? I'm going to test these too.

Again, if anyone has any other suggestions at any time, please let me know. I hope I did not ruffle anyone's feathers. Blessings to all, Curt

[Curt]

Ok, I'm very excited about the start of my season 19. I've done some more whittling through this long thread of possibilities for home-field advantage and when my #32 Atlanta Falcons start the season by hosting my #33 New Orleans Saints, these are the "rules" that are going to be under review for use or not use. Again, thanks for all the suggestions, keep them coming. Apologies for wasting anyone's time or ruffling their feathers. Blessings, Curt.

Home Field Advantage Ideas to review:

Two attempts at 4th down field goals.
Two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards.
Round up half yards for home team and visitors will just be out of luck.
Allow Home teams a touchdown if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Visitors must break the plane of the end zone.
Allow Home teams a safety if a visitor ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line.
Allow Visitors a safety if a home team ball carrier breaks the plane of the end zone.
Home team takes all pushes/benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays. 
Home team gets 2 point conversion attempts from the 2 yard line and visitors from the 5 yard line.
Home team given 'the electric slide" and visitor has any touch tackling.
Home team given 'the electric slide" on wide run arcs.
Home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down. 

[Curt]

Hey Coach Shawn, as I'm keeping a very close eye on how season 19 plays develop etc., I'm finding I really like your idea of "•home team gets an extra pivot." so I'm currently using it too. I listed all suggestions above and then consolidated them further to make it easier to review them for use but nothing is really discounted until it just proves not to be practical for my league. For now, and for me, extra pivots rock! 🙂 Thanks Coach Shawn. Thanks to everyone and please keep ideas coming if you think of one. Blessings, Curt

[Chris]

So glad I asked this question,really enjoying all of the possibilities.Thanks coaches 

[Curt]

Sir Chris, I'm glad you asked it too. There are so many possibilities like you said. I think this has been my favorite thread to date. I'm currently very early in the [long] process of testing out as many suggestions as I can. Certainly, other coaches have influenced how I play my games. Take you for example, I allow the home team 2 tries at 4th-down field goals. Two other of my favorite coaches that come to mind although not limited to, are Coach Shawn [for using extra pivot] and nefgm.org [for electric slide]. To any not mentioned, please don't take it personally. I do love all the suggestions I have received and welcome any new ones that may pop up. I kind of wonder what it might be like if a new thread were started titled "Who is your favorite EF coach?" but that sounds like it could be a little dangerous, so I'll let someone else ponder that one. 🙂 Blessings, Curt.

[JPT222]

I haven't really given much benefit to the home team, but I'm considering on those "too close to call" plays to giving the benefit of the doubt to the Home team, rather then the offense.  Also, I just started rolling the dice to determine penalties after each play.  Though it is a low percentage, maybe only one or two penalties per game, it seems they too often happen on a critical play like a TD or Int.  I may give the Home team the opportunity to negate one penalty per game if they so choose.

[Coach Shawn]

1 minute ago, JPT222 said:

  Though it is a low percentage, maybe only one or two penalties per game, it seems they too often happen on a critical play like a TD or Int.  I may give the Home team the opportunity to negate one penalty per game if they so choose

Oh nice.  Thats another good idea to add to the list.  We’ve built up a nice number of options to choose from.

[Curt]

Ladies and Gentledudes, I'm hoping this waorks. It has been awhile since I've perused the forums for many reasons that keep me busy. One reason is having moved across town with the packing, moving, and unpacking processes causing delays. The best reason though is having so much fun trying out many suggestions for Home field advantage. Let me begin with the ones that just didn't seem to fit right for my league. There may be many that fit yours but these 2 somehow did not have what my league needs:

Two attempts at passes longer than 30 yards. I do not use passing sticks, just the QB. Pass attempts for me remain at "One and Done"
Home team gets 2 point conversion attempts from the 2 yard line and visitors from the 5 yard line. Paying close attention to results, it turns out for me that plenty of 2 yard attempts get missed on both sides of the ball so 2 yard, 2-point conversions will remain the same also.

If I did not include your suggestion, please do not take offense. This is what works best for my game, my rules, my weirdness. Best of luck with your leagues coaches.

Now then the rest I am keeping. Having gone through dozens of games so far, except for 2 games with a visitor victory and 2 games with a greater than 6 point spread, I am happy to say that all of my games with these home-field-advantages incorporated into them were decided for the home team by 3 or less points, kewl. 🙂 They are as follows:

Two attempts at 4th down field goals for the home team.
Round up half yards for home team and visitors will just be out of luck.
Allow home teams a touchdown if a ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line. Visitors must break the plane of the end zone.
Allow home teams a safety if a visitor ball carrier breaks the plane of the goal line.
Allow Visitors a safety if a home team ball carrier breaks the plane of the end zone.
Home team takes all pushes/benefit of the doubt on those infuriating, close, hard to call plays.
Home team given 'the electric slide" and visitor has any touch tackling at the point of contact.
Home team given 'the electric slide" on wide run arcs and visitors are down at the point of contact.
Home team to "ignore the electric slide" over the line of scrimmage and attempt a pass if the quarterback is not yet down.

It is awesome to see how things develop over time. Again, I have found these fit with my league. As always, you will need to find what works best for you and your league. Best of blessings, Curt

[Bob Davis]

Thanks Curt. Plenty of good, viable suggestions for home team advantage. I don't incorporate any at the moment, but next season I will give the home team a one-time 5-yard procedure penalty at the home team's choosing once per game. This is to simulate crowd noise. It can be incorporated only before the play has started so as not to wipeout a tremendous gain of yardage or a score.