Wow now this is
something that is very interesting that is backed up by some serious science.
The Stanford researchers dug through 25 years of Monday night NFL games and flagged every time a West Coast team played an East Coast team. Then, in an inspired move, they compared the final scores for each game with the point spread developed by bookmakers in Vegas. The results were stunning. The West Coast teams dominated their East Coast opponents no matter where they played. A West Coast team won 63 percent of the time, by an average of two touchdowns. The games were much closer when an East Coast team won, with an average margin of victory of only nine points. By picking the West Coast team every time, someone would have beaten the point spread 70 percent of the time. For gamblers in Las Vegas, the matchup was as good as found money.
Also these scientists adjusted for how good teams are as well. In other words they didn't just look at the awesome 49ers teams from the 80s smacking around the hapless Patriots from that era:
In a test to ensure that their findings weren't the result of West Coast teams simply being better during those years, the researchers expanded their scope and looked at every Monday Night Football game played during that twenty-five-year time span. They found that the overall winning percentages for West Coast and East Coast teams were essentially even when the teams were not playing a game against an opponent from the other coast. Nor were the results a reflection of home-field advantage. When an East Coast team traveled to another destination within its same time zone, it won 45 percent of the time. But if a team from the East Coast played somewhere in the Pacific time zone, its winning percentage shrunk to only 29 percent.
So betting against the team coming from the East Coast to the West Coast is very easy money. I wonder if you can check this information against the Sunday late game as well? If the results match up then you have a nice way to check if this information is true.
