WSU fans did their part vs. Portland State

[425cougfan]

Yes. CFBStats.com used to provide this data for free - now they charge thousands for the entire suite of statistical data. The last year they provided it for free was 2013; lucky for me, I saved it going back to 2006.

Originally I intended to run a regression model in SPSS to understand which variables impacted which other variables, but the data hygiene process took so long just to get scores by game (and to remove neutral site games as that would adversely affect the implications) that I ran a correlation instead. 790 games is still a huge sample to help answer the question, and that showed a 0.189 relationship between home wins (binary) and attendance (continuous). Again, this is statistical noise.

If you want to talk about false starts (e.g.), that's another issue. Theoretically, causing false starts would help you win games, but at the end of the day, do you win games? A simple correlation strongly suggests NO. Your point about it having *some* effect and citing the Seahawks is well taken; however, there is such a big difference between a stadium + fanbase combination (Clink) that can completely paralyze another team's ability to communicate with one another, and an open-air horseshoe college stadium which could never have that effect if it were filled with forty-thousand colicky, screaming infants.

It's also worth noting that, while Seattle has always had decent football fans, success did not follow. The fan base has doubled as a result of their success and so has the noise. If great Seattle fans were going to cause success, it would have happened more often than 2005 and 2012-2014.

Regarding Boise State attendance, here's a neat article:

Boise State Struggling to Find Answer to Attendance Issue (September 2014)

Appreciate it, Chip. I'm not going to argue with you too much about stats -- I can tell just from the terminology you're using that, as a lawyer who was told I wouldn't have to do math anymore, I'm heavily outgunned -- but it seems like one would always expect to find a tiny correlation between simple attendance and winning home games due to the very definition of what a correlation is.

You're not going to have the teams with smaller stadiums going winless at home, nor will you have the teams with larger stadiums going undefeated (where, I presume, you'd have a high degree of correlation, but even then it would be relatively low due to the team in the small stadium that lost all its games still having, say, 50% as many fans as the team with the large stadium).

Using a highly simplified hypothetical, let's say you only have two teams, Utah and UCLA. In this hypothetical, let's say Utah sells out all its games in 45,000-seat Rice-Eccles, has the "Muss" going crazy with an electric atmosphere, etc., while UCLA (in this example) is having a bad year and only gets 45,000 per game in the Rose Bowl with a dead atmosphere. In this silly example, let's say Utah goes 6-0 at home and UCLA goes 0-6 at home. Even in this absurd example designed to maximize the potential effects of a packed house affecting the game, I think the correlation between simple attendance and winning games would be zero. The number of fans at the game is the same in each example, but you have one team winning each game and the other one losing each game. By definition, there's no correlation at all.

Now, if you instead looked at something like percent of capacity filled and correlated that with wins and losses, I think it would be more meaningful, but would still be subject to a lot of noise (in the example above, the correlation between filling the stadium and winning would be a lot higher than zero, but could owe to UCLA being terrible and Utah being really good more than the dead environment affecting the outcome of the game, which is the point you guys are making).

To really analyze this, I think you'd have to look at things like relative performance at home versus on the road, with a key factor being percent of capacity filled, not just the number of fans in the stands.

 

[SCglory]

No we didn't.

That screenshot is in the 2nd half. Look at it. You think players are inspired to play in front of that? Honestly they should have just not come out at half time. The fans didn't want to. Why should they? Seriously answer me. WHY should players come out and play in the cold wet weather for students/fans that won't support them through it. Nobody should expect them to care until we show that we care.

Here's a screenshot of a few home openers.

This is Oregon State only up 6-0 against Weber State in the 3rd. This was on labor day. Weber State doesn't travel.

Oh is the weather an excuse for the fan base? That's funny because the fan base doesn't want the weather to be an excuse for the players.

Here's Cincinnati vs Alabama A&M

It poured rain so much that they had to stop the game.

In the 2nd half despite the rain... despite winning 35-7

And that's the difference between WSU fans/students and everybody else.

We will never get better no matter who the coach is...no matter who the players are...until we fix our crappy football culture.

And don't tell me they have to win first. F YOU if you think that.

There is nothing on a ticket or seat that says can only be used if we are a winning program.
There is nothing on the seat or ticket that says. Well you can leave at half time and half @ss your support.

Those are things we decided to do and we should be embarrassed for doing it. People are lucky they don't show the stands on TV to show people how sad of a fan base we are. If people outside knew how our fans are leaving at halftime, making excuses for weather but not letting the players make that excuse, they would laugh at us for being so mad that we aren't a good program.

If the players need to be "inspired" to beat Portland State, they need to have their butts kicked back to whatever hole they came out of

 

[SCglory]

Appreciate it, Chip. I'm not going to argue with you too much about stats -- I can tell just from the terminology you're using that, as a lawyer who was told I wouldn't have to do math anymore, I'm heavily outgunned -- but it seems like one would always expect to find a tiny correlation between simple attendance and winning home games due to the very definition of what a correlation is.

You're not going to have the teams with smaller stadiums going winless at home, nor will you have the teams with larger stadiums going undefeated (where, I presume, you'd have a high degree of correlation, but even then it would be relatively low due to the team in the small stadium that lost all its games still having, say, 50% as many fans as the team with the large stadium).

Using a highly simplified hypothetical, let's say you only have two teams, Utah and UCLA. In this hypothetical, let's say Utah sells out all its games in 45,000-seat Rice-Eccles, has the "Muss" going crazy with an electric atmosphere, etc., while UCLA (in this example) is having a bad year and only gets 45,000 per game in the Rose Bowl with a dead atmosphere. In this silly example, let's say Utah goes 6-0 at home and UCLA goes 0-6 at home. Even in this absurd example designed to maximize the potential effects of a packed house affecting the game, I think the correlation between simple attendance and winning games would be zero. The number of fans at the game is the same in each example, but you have one team winning each game and the other one losing each game. By definition, there's no correlation at all.

Now, if you instead looked at something like percent of capacity filled and correlated that with wins and losses, I think it would be more meaningful, but would still be subject to a lot of noise (in the example above, the correlation between filling the stadium and winning would be a lot higher than zero, but could owe to UCLA being terrible and Utah being really good more than the dead environment affecting the outcome of the game, which is the point you guys are making).

To really analyze this, I think you'd have to look at things like relative performance at home versus on the road, with a key factor being percent of capacity filled, not just the number of fans in the stands.

there are SO many more things to analyze than just numbers, e.g. is one rabid fan worth 2 who sit on their hands? are all fans in all locations equally valuable? What do you mean by valuable? Spening money? making noise? Coming back for more? Does distance driven have a correlation with rabidity? Many stadiums are designed for noise enhancement--what role does that play? etc etc