Mickey's Musings: Dan Majerle, Thomas W Harvey High School and European Football
Welcome to Mickey's Musings, my weekly notebook where we skip the linear narrative and dive straight into three completely unrelated, but entirely fascinating storylines that are bouncing around in my head.
I had the “privilege” of attending the Thursday Night Massacre in Buffalo since Buffalo is only a little over four hours from Flint, my wife suggested we attend the game. Far be it for me to disagree with my lovely bride, so I immediately began investigating it. When we first started to talk about it, I hadn’t thought about it being the opening of the brand-new stadium. Admittedly, that gave me some sticker shock when we started combing the secondhand market for tickets.
However, I digress, so let’s get into our three topics…
Some 40+ years ago, during the Dan Majerle era, I attended Central Michigan University. I even played against him in a few pick-up games (another story for another day). In 1988 Dan was the leading scorer on the U.S. Olympic team. Incidentally, it was that Bronze Medal performance that led to the Dream Team in 1992. On August 21st of 1988, roughly three weeks prior to the start of the Olympics, the team featuring Thunder Dan and David Robinson lost an exhibition game to a team led by, among others, Isiah Thomas and Reggie Miller in the first ever game at The Palace of Auburn Hills.
Just as my claim to fame is a pickup game with the Chippewa GOAT, one of my wife’s many claims to fame over the years has been the fact she attended that basketball game that opened the Palace. 38 years later she now can add Highmark Stadium to the list of arenas that she has opened.
“Electric” doesn’t even begin to describe the atmosphere at Highmark Stadium. I’m sure you could feel it on TV, but being there in person was just incredible. There was a buzz among the crowd before you even reached the stadium property. Inside, it literally made the hair on your arm stand up like you had rubbed a balloon on your head. When they played the Bills’ hype video, followed by the team intros – I sent someone a one word text. I will admit it, that one word was a four letter word. As Ralphie said in “A Christmas Story” I used "the big one, the queen-mother of dirty words, the 'F-dash-dash-dash' word." However, I made it a long drawn out 20 letter word…there was no other word to describe what I imagine every Lions’ fan in that building was feeling at that
moment.
The energy was oozing and even if the opposing team was the undefeated 1972 Dolphins, coached by the pride of Thomas W. Harvey High School, in Painesville, Ohio – Don Shula – I’d have to take the Bills on this night. Although they lost to the Raiders and the Colts, many people consider the 1973 Phins to be an even better team. Others, myself included, consider the 1985 Bears to be the best team of all time. If the ’85 Bears or either of those Miami teams were the visiting team in the Highmark Stadium regular season opener, I don’t know if they’d have a chance at victory.
The capacity of Highmark Stadium is 61,280, which may swell to as many as 65,000 when they sell standing room only seats. In recent years the Lions fans have traveled as well as any team in the NFL. There’s been a number of Detroit road games in recent memory where I recall hearing “Let’s Go Lions” chants coming through my TV. In this game, most people estimate the split in the stadium was below 10% Detroit fans in attendance.
Even the great Don Shula would struggle when facing the intensity of having 90% of the people in the crowd not just rooting against you, but doing so with such fervor. Our Lions were definitely affected by these crowds. The Bills started the game by matriculating down the field, 10 plays and 85 yards for a score….Their defense forced a three and out on our first possession….Josh Allen followed by leading the Bills’ offense on another long drive. This one was 8 plays and covered 79 yards for their second touchdown of the game….the Bills defense followed that up by allowing the Lions to get a first down, but after a sack and a snap over Goff’s head due to the crowd noise, it went into the books as a 4 play, 4 yard drive….four minutes and change later the Bills made it 21-0 by covering 57 yards in 9 plays. At this point, down 21-0, the Lions had run 7 plays for a total of negative one yard.
Shula, Reed, Ditka – you name the coach. In that atmosphere, I don’t know that anyone was going to come back from taking the body blows the Bills had delivered.
On the bright side, the Lions continued to battle. When it was all said and done, they outscored the Bills 31-20 from that point forward.
I want to preface the last topic this week with a disclaimer. I hate hearing people whine about officiating. I can’t stand listening to fans that grumble about how their team always gets the short end of the officiating stick, ignoring the number of calls and non-calls that went their way. In addition to those complaints, I feel the terms “rigged” and “fixed” are low hanging fruit for fanbases that can’t accept the fact their team didn’t have enough to win on that particular day.
I say all that before discussing the penalties, both called and uncalled, that influenced this game. At the end of the day the Lions were assessed 10 penalties and the Bills a mere 5. There seemed to be a number of hits on Jared Goff that weren’t called if one were to apply the rules we have seen applied over the last few years. Dion Dawkins looked like he moved a half step early on nearly every Bills passing play. And, don’t get me started on the defensive holding calls that bailed out the Bills.
Do I feel the fix was in? Nope. Do I think Roger Goodell has a direct line to the replay booth to tilt the outcome of games? No. Am I among the fans that feel every official is out to get Detroit? Not in the least. “Detroit vs Everybody” is a nice rallying cry, but when applied too liberally I think it is a crutch for the weak.
I am a firm believer that officials are humans and as such are able to be influenced by the numbers of fans that cheer, or jeer, their every move.
During Covid games that were played with no fans. In the NBA and the NHL the home/road splits were roughly 50/50 when playing before empty arenas. For the 20 years prior to the pandemic home teams won at a 55% clip. During Covid teams still traveled across different time zones to play games. The visiting teams still had to deal with sleeping in hotels while the home teams slept in their own beds. The only difference was the lack of fans and without them the home field advantage was negated.
In August of 2020 a study was completed that analyzed the homefield advantage of teams in the European football leagues. Across 1400+ games, they noted not only the winning percentages in the empty stadiums, but also how referees acted and how players actually played the games.
What were the results of the study?
Home teams won 44% of the games (with around 33% ending in ties) when playing before crowds. During Covid the home team winning percentage dropped to 33% (with both more ties and more victories to the road teams)
Home teams scored almost half a goal less per game than they did pre-shutdown
Penalties were called more frequently on both teams. Yellow cards increased by 7% for the home team and decreased by 29% for the visitors, meaning they were now being called relatively even between home and road teams.
Basically all the way around, there was a home field advantage that had been nullified by playing in empty stadiums.
On the bright side – if we get a rematch against the Bills it will be in Los Angeles in February.
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