The second major change to the BAW methodology is that home-field advantage will no longer be a blanket +/- 3 points. The flaw in that system should be obvious. Playing a night road game in Baton Rouge verse LSU is much different than playing an 11 AM game in Evanston against Northwestern. It defies common sense to put the disadvantage to the road teams as equal in terms of points for these games.
Instead, for 2008, it's time HFA became team specific for BAW rankings. There were a few possible ways to do this. One is to go through and backtest based on past scores how much HFA a team has had. This would be the most rigorous number method. However, this system is fatally flawed in the sample size. In addition, there are numerous minor flaws with internal and external consistency. Basically, the numbers are not stable year-to-year and even within years. Plus, the numbers are not consistent with general observations-ie, some places rated quite difficult by every human show up as no HFA in the numbers! Even those numbers do not account for bye weeks, time of game, etc.
So, what to do? The alternative I chose was to follow Phil Steele's HFA rankings. These are widely available in Steele's yearly guide. Phil Steele is well respected. I think he is THE expert when it comes to college football. His opinions generally align with all of the talking heads. When he disagrees, it's most often that Phil has the extra insight to the situation. While I hate being beholden to one specific guy (you know, why I changed from using sagarin predictor so much), this seems like the best available and easiest way to use HFA.
Keep in mind that there are still some flaws. HFA matters more in expected close games and games were the crowd is 'up,' such as nationally televised and rivalry games. However, the difference from the norm is highly exaggerated. I don't think it will change the BAW rankings to not account for those factors.
Still, I see using the Steele HFA as a major improvement verse straight up +/- 3 points.
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