The East Coast Scheduling Bias

Transcription

1 The East Coast Scheduling Bias By Brian Stonelake Are you an NFL fan? Of course you are. OK, think of your favorite team. Other than your quarterback, name the player who most influences your team s success. What if I told you that the NFL created a rule mandating four arbitrary road game suspensions for this player? Houston fans - no JJ Watt. Patriot Fans, prepare to be Gronkless. Worse yet, this rule only applies to a handful of teams. On Thursday the league released its 2016 schedule and (of course) they didn t implement this rule unfortunately they did quantifiably worse. To understand the NFL s blatant error, allow me to provide a crash course in chronobiology. To oversimplify: the human body doesn t work well in the morning. I don t mean the morning after a night with a teething toddler, or following a superbowl party with too much whiskey, I mean when fully awake and well rested. Many aspects of exercise performance follow the core body temperature cycle, which is at its lowest early in the morning, and highest in the early evening. This circadian rhythm does not adjust quickly, so while week 1 s 1pm (EST) kickoff will feel like 1pm for Panthers players, it will feel much earlier for the visiting Raiders whose body clocks are still synchronized with west coast time. During such games, dubbed morning body clock games, the west coast visitors circadian rhythms present a biological disadvantage. Do not confuse this with being tired ; this is a physiologically determined handicap directly affecting many aspects of exercise performance. For example, every 0.1 o F decrease in core body temperature results in a nerve conduction velocity decrease of 0.32 m/sec, directly reducing reaction time. These players aren t sluggish and tired; they re biologically mandated to react slower. Core Body Temperature (F) Time of Day (hours)

2 One might assume that at worst the physiological handicap provides a marginal advantage for the east coast home team, an impact that would have little practical implication. In fact, the opposite is true. From , there were 37 NFL games where the road team faced a morning body clock start time. All 37 involved a central or east coast team hosting a team from the west or mountain time zones (hereafter aggregated as west due to scarcity of mountain teams). The home team won 6.% of these Home Team Win Rate games; far in excess of the 57.2% win rate for home 70% teams in general. 65% 60% 55% 50% & Central & East & & Early VISITOR TIME ZONE & BODY CLOCK TYPE This statistically significant difference in win percentage (P = 0.002) did not happen by accident, and is not seen in otherwise comparable situations like east coast teams playing late west coast games. You can cut the data however you want, controlling for any factor that you wish, and still come to the same indisputable conclusion teams playing a morning body clock start time face a significant competitive disadvantage. This shocking result makes more sense when you consider the numerous aspects of performance that oscillate daily with core body temperature. An incomplete list includes respiratory efficiency, blood flow, joint flexibility, reaction time and muscle strength. Further, at suboptimal body clock times, athletes record lower mean and peak power outputs, lesser peaks of lactate production, decreased high intensity work rates and lessened stamina. Conversely in the late afternoon / early evening hours, not only are athletes self-chosen work rates higher, these efforts are not accompanied by an increase in perceived exertion. Given the above, it s not surprising that nearly every Olympic world record was set in the late afternoon or early evening. While scheduling considerations may explain some of this, tests isolating body clock time reveal up to a 10% decrease in aspects of athletic performance in the morning. For comparison, a 10% decrement in performance is also seen when consuming the legal limit of alcohol, or after three consecutive nights of only three hours of sleep. Are the Niners playing like they re horribly sleep deprived? Do the Chargers look drunk out there? Essentially they are.

3 With a better understanding of the chronobiological detriments faced by morning body clock teams, we can look for the expected results in specific areas of play. Playing a morning body clock start increases the frequency of penalties accepted by the opponent (henceforth penalties ), turnovers per game, and dropped passes. Importantly from the league s perspective, this serves not only as justification for the competitive imbalance, but also as evidence that these games do not represent the best product that the NFL can put forward. Both penalty and turnover prevalence is greater in general for road than home teams. Controlling for this fact by comparing morning body clock teams penalties and turnovers to those of other road teams, we see the physiologically expected increases. From 2003 to 201 (the available data) visiting teams averaged 6.9 penalties and 1.71 turnovers per game. Teams playing a morning body clock game amassed 7.16 penalties and turned the ball over on average 1.83 times per game; increases of 10.3 and 7.1% respectively. These increases are both statistically significant. Due in part to a smaller (relative) variance in penalties, the increase in penalties is statistically significant at a higher level (P < ) than for turnovers (P = 0.035). PENALTIES PER GAME All Home Teams Penalties East Turnovers Central Morning TURNOVERS PER GAME 5.50% 5.0% 5.30% Pass Drop Rate Further supporting the narrative of sloppy play is the physiologically expected increase in pass drop rate for morning body clock teams. To avoid the possible bias of trailing teams throwing more frequently, pass drop rates are examined in lieu of pass drop totals (this data were only available from 2006 to 201). 5.20% 5.10% 5.00%.90%.80%.70% Home Teams East Central Morning We again see the expected increase in pass drop rate among teams playing body clock morning games (5.1% compared to the.97% rate of all other visiting teams), but this time not conclusively (P = ). The relatively small sample size and factors such as prevent defenses employed late in games by teams with large leads may have masked this correlation.

4 Looking at every game for the past 15 years, we see that on average scheduling a morning body clock game costs the visitor slightly over 3 points. Not surprisingly, these results are anticipated by bookmakers who show similar shifts in point spreads for such games. When the league decided to schedule the kickoff for the Rams trip to New England at 1:05 (EST) instead of say :05 (EST), they handed the Patriots 3 points in addition to the normal home field advantage. The magnitude of this advantage is hard to overstate. In August 2013, RJ Bell wrote an informative piece for Grantland where he found a Las Vegas consensus for the value of NFL players (as measured by a hypothetical point spread change if they were hurt). The highest non QB was Adrian Peterson, who was coming off a 2000 yard, MVP season where he averaged an astounding 6 yards per carry. He was estimated to be worth 2.5 points. In other words, Las Vegas measures the competitive disadvantage faced by morning body clock teams to be slightly greater than that associated with losing one of the most dominant offensive players in NFL history. Welcome back to LA, Rams. We regret to inform you that you will now face an unavoidable handicap far more important than a hypothetical injury to Todd Gurley, in half of your 2016 road games. The next highest valued non QB in Bell s piece was Calvin Johnson, who led the league in receptions and yards the year prior, and was valued at 1.5 points. The only defensive player worth more than half of a point was JJ Watt, estimated to be worth one point. Quarterbacks were worth as much as seven points (Peyton Manning), with Russell Wilson, Andrew Luck, Tony Romo and Sam Bradford all being worth three points. In other words, when the Seahawks played at Indianapolis in week 5 that year (a game in which Seattle suffered its first loss), they should have been indifferent between playing the game at 1pm (EST) as scheduled, and agreeing to play Tavaris Jackson instead of Russell Wilson behind center in exchange for moving the game to pm (EST). With all due respect to the former Alabama State QB, that is astounding. Conveniently, last year s playoffs provide a wonderful application of Bell s piece. Two days prior to Seattle s wild card playoff game in Minnesota, the Seahawks announced that star tailback Marshawn Lynch, who was deemed by Coach Carroll to be ready to rock on Monday and a full go at practice Wednesday, would not play Sunday. This news sent shockwaves around the football universe and was a top story on many sports news outlets. The unexpected nature of the Lynch announcement made it easy to quantify, as the betting line quickly adjusted 1.5 points. Losing their pro bowl tailback, in frigid conditions where a running game is paramount, with only a practice squad player (cut earlier in the year by Seattle) as a backup (Thomas

5 Rawls already ruled out with a broken ankle), was roughly half as important as the largely overlooked morning body clock start time. But wait, you counter, didn t Seattle win that game? Yes, they did. The chronobiological disadvantage, like any disadvantage, is not impossible to overcome. Seattle was a far superior team, having the best DVOA in football (Minnesota was 11 th ), and at 6:1 the best superbowl odds of all teams playing wildcard weekend (Minnesota was 35:1). That and a little bit of luck (like Blair Walsh missing a 27-yard field goal to take the lead with less than a minute to go) can overcome most any disadvantage. But that does not change the fact that Seattle faced a completely unfair disadvantage in the first place. Well okay, you admit, but maybe Seattle should have gotten a higher seed to avoid playoff road games all together. Yes, a higher seed would have prevented the unfair situation from occurring in this instance, but why should certain teams have to overcome a systematic disadvantage in the regular season just to avoid possibly facing that same disadvantage in the playoffs? Fortunately for proponents of changing this unfair scheduling practice (and Seahawk haters like myself), the very next week Seattle was scheduled to play another morning body clock game, this time in Carolina. In the first half of this game, when the Seahawks were at their largest chronobiological disadvantage, they were outscored They eventually lost The staggering implications of the morning body clock disadvantage is nothing new to Seattle. In the Pete Carroll era, they have been outscored 75-0 in the first half of morning body clock playoff games. Dating back to 2003, they have faced 6 such games in the post season, their lone win coming in the aforementioned case of Blair Walsh s missed chip-shot FG. Inexplicably, despite being made aware of this competitive disadvantage, the NFL still schedules morning body clock games with high frequency. I am shocked that west coast fans, especially those as obnoxiously loud as Seattle s, allow their teams to be so severely handicapped. Some foolishly hide behind anecdotal evidence pointing to games where morning body clock teams win. Yeah, the claim is not that playing in the morning is an insurmountable detriment, but rather that it is a significant detriment. I ve seen teams block punts with only ten men on the field. Would that make a new rule limiting west coast teams to ten payers in punt return situations any less fair?

6 While total eradication of morning body clock games would be difficult given the complexity of the NFL schedule, it seems as though such occurrences should be greatly reduced (and playoff occurrences eliminated). The most logical fix is to shift the majority of these starts from 1:00pm (EST) to :00pm (EST). While this creates unwanted competition with the NFL s national game, it seems to be a small price to pay for the integrity of the sport. It is worth noting that of the non-primetime games of the past 15 years, there is a 68 to 32% split between the first and second TV time slots (games starting at approximately 1:00 and :00 (EST) respectively). To examine the extreme case, had all 37 morning body clock games been moved to the second TV time slot, in addition to righting one of the worst wrongs in professional sports, it would have amounted to a more equitable 56 to % split of games; seemingly advantageous to the fan who prefers to watch as much football as possible. The rise in popularity of fantasy sports, for example, would seem to suggest a preference toward a more equal split of games among these time periods. This topic was brought to the attention of Commissioner Goodell prior to the 2009 season, at which point he was quoted as saying that he had not seen specific information suggesting early starts [for west coast teams traveling east] could create a competitive disadvantage for visiting teams. To Commissioner Goodell s credit, he revisited the subject in October 2012 with a much more sympathetic view of the situation, saying that "Several of our teams on the Coast have raised that [issue of morning body clock games] and we have been studying it. We have tried to put as many of those games on the East Coast at pm. You can imagine the thousands of different issues you have to Morning Body Clock Games put into the schedule. But the 10 o'clock starts are pretty tough." Average Despite this statement, little has actually been done in terms of scheduling. Since 2001, there have been anywhere from 16 to 31 morning body clock games, with an average of 25 per year. This accounts for more than half of all road games for the affected west coast teams. Today after months of consideration and millions of dollars dedicated to creating the schedule, the NFL announced 27 more

7 Hardest hit are the Raiders who face 5 such games, all in the first half of the season. Should San Diego fans find their team in contention in November, they would be wise to temper their post season expectations as their last 3 road games are all morning body clock starts. Seahawk fans still reeling from their unfair playoff matchups can take some solace in knowing that they only face 2 morning clock games this year; however an educated fan would quickly point out that this is 2 too many. A combination of public misunderstanding and the league s denial has allowed this travesty to go on far too long. The NFL has gone to great lengths to maintain a level playing field, yet allows this audacious injustice to continue. It is the duty of every fan of the NFL, whether your team is adversely affected by this competitive disadvantage or not, to educate yourself and your fellow fans on this matter. This great game deserves better. Note: A more detailed examination of this matter can be found in Managing the Body Clock published in the February 2016 issue of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists Journal of Exercise Physiology.