For the second year in a row, the Super Bowl is being hosted in a city of a participant. Last year, for the first time ever, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in their home stadium. This year, the Los Angeles Rams will host the Super Bowl in their home of SoFi Stadium. The Super Bowl is intended to be on a neutral field, but does being the host city give the Los Angeles Rams an advantage? Did top-rated sportsbooks assign the Rams extra points of NFL odds for home-field advantage?
Home field advantage is an important factor when handicapping an NFL football game. Usually, home field is equated by NFL odds to be anywhere between 2 to 3.5 points, depending on the year and the stadium. Factors that lead the home team to get such an advantage are crowd noise, lack of travel, and familiarity with their surroundings. Let’s take a look at each of these and see how they will affect Super Bowl LVI.
Crowd Noise
The Los Angeles Rams were founded in the city of Cleveland. The Rams played in Cleveland from 1936 to 1945. In 1946, they moved to Los Angeles California. The Rams stayed in Los Angeles until 1995. That began a 20-year stint in St Louis. After 2015, Rams owner Stan Kroenke decided he wanted greater potential revenue and moved to the nation’s second-largest media market, Los Angeles. From 2016 on, the Rams have played in LA.
The Rams’ time in St Louis is crucial because many fans in Los Angeles grew up without an NFL team being in their city. For that reason, there are many Raiders and 49ers fans in Los Angeles. Also, Los Angeles is a destination city, and many people from around the country move to LA and bring their hometown NFL allegiances with them. So while the Rams play in Los Angeles, they are not necessarily the most popular NFL team in the city.
This was quite evident during the NFC championship game at SoFi Stadium. With many of the current fans growing up without a team in Los Angeles, many members of Los Angeles adopted the dynastic 49ers as their favorite team. Plus it was a short journey for fans from San Francisco. As a result, the silent snap count was forced to be used by both teams. The silent snap count occurs when the stadium is so loud that the players on the offense cannot hear the snap count. They move to a silent count in order to mitigate the crowd noise.
How many Rams fans will be in attendance this Sunday? I believe it could be similar to the NFC Championship game where the crowd was split 50-50. Therefore it’s hard to see crowd noise being an advantage for Los Angeles, even though they are technically playing at home.
Lack of Travel
The Rams will be able to stay in their homes all week rather than living out of a hotel for the Super Bowl. In a normal week, I think this is a big advantage. But due to the overwhelming obligations of the media that surround the Super Bowl, this is not a normal week. With two weeks off before the game, the Bengals will have plenty of time to travel and get acclimated to Los Angeles and the weather.
This is not like a normal week where the road team flies in on Friday night or Saturday morning for a Sunday game. The Bengals are in LA already, and staying at the hotel together will be a positive for team focus. The Bengals will be able to focus on the game without constant ticket requests from friends and neighbors in their communities.
So while normally travel is a big factor in home field advantage, the two weeks, the media obligations, and the lack of friends and family during the preparation period makes this one a wash as well.
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Familiarity With Surroundings
The Rams will be using their normal locker rooms, and are fully aware of the dimensions around the field. But unlike an NBA arena where sightlines can dictate the ease of shot-making, I don’t know how much advantage being familiar with the football field provides. Sightlines aren’t nearly as important in the NFL.
Once again, I think the spectacle and attention around the Super Bowl kind of mitigates any slight advantage that the Rams might gain by having familiarity with their surroundings. So many things will be different, from the number of people asking questions on the media day, to the length of the halftime show, to the extra decorations brought in the field, that I really think it’s hard to declare that familiarity with the surroundings will be a huge advantage for the Los Angeles Rams.
