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Can fans affect the outcome of a football game?
Torrey Smith asks Sal Khan about how fans may affect the outcome of a game. This content is provided by the 49ers Museum Education Program..
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- Could it be the coaches, and not the refs? The home coach can call more aggressive plays when at home because he knows that the offense will not have to deal with so much noise on the home team's third down, as one example.(2 votes)
- Yes but the quaterback still has to tell the players the play and then they might have a hard time hearing the play.(1 vote)
- So does screaming at the tv count or you have to be specifically at the stadium in general just clearing my doubts(1 vote)
- Unless you have an insanely loud voice, you'd have to be at the game.(1 vote)
- What if they play in London or something?(1 vote)
- What is the best way a line backer can help the team win?(1 vote)
- It suck when they cant hear you cheering at home. ;P(1 vote)
- If fans make too much noise, does that make you lose?(1 vote)
- no the hope that the team they are cheering for makes them want to do better to impress the fans(1 vote)
- Does temperature affect the performance of NFL players if they are not used to it?(1 vote)
- Probably. The Rams would probably end up pretty frozen in Green Bay.(1 vote)
- Torrey Smith isnt even on the team anymore(0 votes)
Video transcript
hey Sal can't fans affect the outcome of a football game great question Tory is something we've all wondered is getting fans actually affect the outcome of a game well if you look just purely at the statistics of on average in the NFL the probability that a team wins at home versus that they win on the road there is a higher probability that they win a home game that there is there is a 57 I'll say approximately fifty-seven percent chance that they win at home so win at home and we're looking across all Ln FL teams and so that means that there is a forty three percent chance that you lose on the road lose on the road now exactly why the home team seems to have an advantage this is not a hundred percent understood there's a lot of theories why one theory is just the flat-out noise and the noise tends to pick up when the home team is playing defense it makes it harder for the visiting team to call plays maybe so this is just hard to call plays it might just be intimidating you can't intimidating intimidating maybe it just makes the visiting team nervous it could just be familiarity so it could just be familiarity that the home team practices on their home on their in their home stadium they're just used to how it goes maybe they didn't have to travel as far so let me be less travel there closer to their friends and family they're less fatigued from travel but there's an actual interesting theory that I got off of the freakonomics website that believe that it's actually not any of these or maybe some of these have a small effect but it's actually based on on how the game itself is called it's due to some subconscious bias by the referees so referees and once again none of these referees want to be biased but there's a theory that if you're surrounded by 50 60 or 70,000 people who are very happy if you make will call a certain way and very upset if you may call another way just human nature subconsciously you might be a little bit more biased for the home team so this is actually a very very very interesting theory my best guess is its some combination of all of the above that at the end of day referees are human they are consciously unbiased but when you have 70,000 people yelling at you you you kind of want to make them happy so that might lead to some of this the noise does intimidate the visiting team it does make it hard for them to call plays and there is just familiarity and let's travel for the home team so all of that combined does make the home-field advantage a real thing in terms of the fans role well the fans for sure are what's making the noise and so that could elite that could lead that could lead to some of these dynamics but the fans are also the ones that are putting a lot of that subconscious emotional pressure on the referees so all in all I would say yes I think the fans do help out come help help drive the outcome of a football game