Why do conference championships have home and road effects?

[ksbass]

I have noticed that there are significant home/road splits in the game when simming. Probably something should be there, but they seem very potent. However, I truly do not understand why there are home and road teams for conference championship games. They are played mostly on neutral sites. So why should home/road effects impact this game? Yet they assuredly appear to.

To test my hypothesis, I simmed 200 AAC championship games between Cincinnati and my Houston team. Cincinnati was home, despite a lesser conference record (7-1 vs. 8-0). Cincinnati won 197 times. That is NOT random variance between evenly matched teams. It looks like home field in conference title games can significantly impact one's career trajectory.

[brooks_piggott]

I don't think we turned off home adjustments in bowl games or playoffs... will have to fix that in the next version. However, the home field advantage is not particularly strong in the game code so while it does need to be turned off it's not the primary reason for the results you saw in your test.

[ksbass]

Thank you for looking at this, Brooks. I do like the basic design so much. A few little details will make it my perfect sports management sim.