Last week I wrote about how there had been a clear divide between ranked and unranked teams, both from an overall winning percentage viewpoint as well as against the spread. It's not the only aspect of the 2026 season that has been an outlier to this point from a gambling perspective. Homefield advantage is realer than ever before.
So far this season, in games between FBS opponents, the home team is a remarkable 173-145-5 ATS. That's a 54.4% cover rate. For perspective, assuming the standard (-110) juice, if you'd just blindly bet every home team in FBS games this season, you'd be up 13.5 units this season.
That's not a typical result! Going back to the 2014 season, the beginning of the CFP era, that 54.4% win rate is the highest by a wide margin. The next closest season was 2021.
What's a bit more interesting is that this season continues something of a trend. From 2014 to 2023, that 2021 season was the only time home teams finished above 50% ATS on the season. In 2024, they won 50.9% of the time.
In 2025, they followed it up at 51.3%. The 2024 season marked the start of our new superconference era and was the first season when NIL and the transfer portal really kicked in. That last note is what makes what I'm about to bring up slightly more interesting.
In games between G5/6 schools, the home team is covering 57.3% of the time this year. It was 53.4% last season and 53.9% in 2024. Perhaps one of the byproducts of our new NIL era is that, while the richer schools of the Power Four are able to draw in the top talent, often plundering the best players from the Group of Five/Six every portal season, home-field advantage has become far more important among G5/6 schools who are playing on a more even playing field talent-wise.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
