Couldn't beat the Little Sisters of the Poor Junior Varsity Squad. Of course, you can add your own homefield advantage numbers to the mix, adjust for difficulty of schedule or anything else you feel is important. The Homefield Advantage Keep in mind that good teams excel at home while bad teams often wish they were playing anywhere else. Still, Vegas assumes that most of us will allocate a 3 point advantage for the hometeam. I've never come to a firm conclusion on what the right approach to this dilemma is.
Many publications publish home and road power ratings.
Problem with this is that you've got to wait until a team plays at least 7 or 8 games before you can get an accurate estimate. One approach I've been looking at concerns how a team has performed against the spread when playing at home. Below is a chart showing how all 30 teams have performed in their last 12 home appearances. I want to get an idea of spread performance without going back into ancient history. New Orleans, NY Giants, San Francisco, Seattle, Detroit, Indianapolis.