Neutral-site games: a problem for everyone but the players
A made-for-TV sport is delivering a made-for-TV product, regardless of arena or insanity of game location
Every year, the absurdities grow in college basketball surrounding why and how certain games are played at certain locations. If you ever ask the question of “why?”, the answer is always “money” and the 🤑 emoji, but some games simply go beyond the pale. The one nearest and dearest to my heart is two teams from Tennessee and North Carolina, separated by all of 360 miles, not playing their game at either team’s home arena. Not even in Charlotte, which would be a home-court advantage of a sort for one school but remains just 3.5 hours from the other.
No, we simply have to play this game 1,100 miles away in Texas to a crowd of a couple thousand for…money.
Tennessee and NC State are playing each other to fill out a contractual obligation with the Hall of Fame Game series. The answer is “money,” but even for 🤑 this gets absurd fast. The Hall of Fame Game series has a location in Charlotte…which is hosting a game between Virginia and Florida. That’s not overly offensive, obviously, but it’s an annoyance to people like you and me.
I cannot and will not travel on a whim to Central Texas in December, and neither can most people. In organizers’ defense, Texas is the highest-ranked non-OG SEC state in terms of Tennessee alumni, and NC State has a large enough San Antonio alumni network per a very mild amount of Googling. Still: this is a game a week before Christmas over a thousand miles away from either school, and if the Hall of Fame organizers still have the same contracts, you’ll be seeing Tennessee and NC State use the abominable Spalding TF-1000 Legacy basketball.
Who does this help, exactly? Who is this for? Who are the numerous neutral-site games, played in ballrooms and arenas with 20% capacity crowds, meant to work for? As far as I can tell, the answer is no one but the organizers and the money-makers themselves. Oh, and the players who play the games, who have no real positive or negative effect on their play regardless of setting based on five years of data.
Neutral sites neutralize everything, including shooting effects
In a normal game, played at a normal home arena, the home team generally out-shoots the road team. Does this happen in every single game? Obviously not; it just happens in more than 50%. Filtering exclusively to non-conference games, you can see that even early-season play - which generally has significantly smaller crowds than conference play - displays some serious effects in offensive performance.
Home teams in non-con play, 2018-2023: 52.9% 2PT, 34.9% 3PT
Road teams in non-con play, 2018-2023: 46.5% 2PT, 32% 3PT
That data is noisy, as there’s a lot of buy games and overwhelmed road opponents that can skew these numbers a bit. Filtering just for high-majors and teams who don’t have to feel overwhelmed every time they step in a road environment, the effects are still notable.
High-major home teams, non-con only, 2018-2023: 54.3% 2PT, 35.1% 3PT
High-major road teams, non-con only, 2018-2023: 48.6% 2PT, 32.2% 3PT
For comparison’s sake, these are all 32 conferences and their home/road splits in conference play:
Home teams in conference play, 2018-2023: 50.7% 2PT, 34.6% 3PT
Road teams in conference play, 2018-2023: 49.2% 2PT, 33.7% 3PT
That shooting split decreases a bit in conference play. This could be explained by any number of factors: general familiarity with venue, more time on the court = better shooting, tighter levels of competition, etc. The split isn’t nearly as wide in conference play; we get far more competitive games week-in, week-out during January and February than we do in December, for example. How do college basketball teams - especially high-major ones who don’t want to play true road games - compensate for this? By scheduling as many neutral-site games as they possibly can.
The great equalizer: a non-home venue
Think of it this way: you’re a team that would like to play tougher competition. In 9 out of 10 cases, your competition would love it if you came to their place. They wouldn’t love it so much if you made them come to your house. So, in the event you can’t come to an agreement, you work out something else: a neutral-site game where neither of you will have a huge fan advantage and where neither team feels disadvantaged by the arena or location.
You agree to it. Fans don’t like it, but money-makers do. The game happens, and in the average case, it’s fine. In fact, on television, it’s so fine that you don’t notice any differences whatsoever in the play from an average game in February. It might even be better than the true home court game you watched the other night. The players on the court, at least over the last five years, seem to be just fine with it:
Home/away non-conference games, 2018-2023: 101.1 Points Per 100 Possessions, 49.7% 2PT, 33.5% 3PT
Neutral site non-conference games, 2018-2023: 100.7 Points Per 100 Possessions, 49.7% 2PT, 33.5% 3PT
Adjusted for venue, players shoot exactly as well at a neutral site as they would have at a true home/road venue. The main difference in efficiency comes from slightly lower offensive rebounding rates at neutral sites; everything else is almost dead-on equal.
Now, on the other hand, you might be saying this: given that true home/away games give you the exact same freaking product with less of the sterile soundstage vibes, wouldn’t you advocate for fewer neutral sites? Well, yes, but I’m aware that these aren’t going away anytime soon. Money isn’t going away anytime soon, because the sport literally cannot operate without it.
Do any venues stand out in positive/negative fashions?
Over time, not really. I did test the last four Maui Invitational events that were actually held in Maui (2017, 2018, 2019, 2022) because of two reasons: it’s the grandaddy of all preseason tournaments and you can’t go 10 minutes in a game without a commentator mentioning Maui’s “soft rims.” Desperate to find out if this was real or not, I can conclusively say the answer is…yes? Possibly?
Maui Invitational, 2017-2022: 108.3 Points Per 100 Possessions, 53.5% 2PT, 35.8% 3PT, 72.4% FT%, 152.3 points per game
All other neutral sites: 100.7 Points Per 100 Possessions, 49.7% 2PT, 33.5% 3PT%, 71.1% FT%, 141.5 points per game
So, yes, commentators, you’re free to make the soft rims joke about Maui as often as you’d like, because it really does appear to be true. For a while, I figured that an unusually high amount of free throw attempts could be part of the cause, but there’s no significant difference between Free Throw Rates in Maui and between any other venue. Pace isn’t significantly different in Maui, either. It really does appear that teams hit jumpers at higher rates, but more importantly, they get better rolls on shots like these.
When November comes around, we’ll probably have the same grouping of reactions once again. A great game will happen between two really good teams. The game will happen at a neutral site; the announced crowd will be around 3,500 with the actual crowd around 2,034. Fans of the two teams involved might constitute about 70% of that number if not more. Even so, said great game will have been witnessed in-person by an elite few.
Neutral-site games are probably a necessary evil for college basketball. The one mentioned in the intro is mostly just evil; programs, particularly high-majors, need to get over themselves and accept that home-and-home series are better for everyone involved. That being said, despite my initial thoughts that neutral-site games are objectively worse, I couldn’t find much of anything to support that take. In fact, some neutral-site games are much better than those ‘normal’ affairs.
So in November and December, when we see a parade of teams taking on neutral-site affairs in the middle of nowhere, we might as well accept them for what they are and what they’ve always been: made-for-TV. They aren’t for us, they’re for viewing from the comforts of a 70-degree room. Even if they’re played in San Antonio to a crowd of hundreds. Especially if they’re played in Maui to a crowd of a few thousand and a viewing audience of millions.
Hey Will, are you on Threads?