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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Behavioral Microfoundations
Volume 3 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2024.1479832
This article is part of the Research Topic Sports, Economics, and Natural Experiments: Advances and Retrospection View all articles

Bye-Bye, Bye Advantage: Estimating the competitive impact of rest differential in the National Football League

Provisionally accepted
Michael Lopez Michael Lopez *Thompson Bliss Thompson Bliss
  • National Football League, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The National Football League (NFL) sets its regular season schedule to optimize viewership and minimize competitive inequities. One inequity assumed to impact team performance is rest differential, defined as the relative number of days between games. Using Bayesian state space models on both game outcomes and betting market data, we estimate the competitive effect of rest differential in American football. We find that the most commonly referred to inequitiesboth the bye week rest advantage and the mini-bye week rest advantage -currently show no significant evidence of providing the rested team a competitive edge. Further, we trace a decline in the advantage of a bye week to a 2011 change to the NFL's Collective Bargaining Agreement, which represents a natural experiment to test the relevance of rest and preparation in football.Prior to the agreement, NFL teams off a bye week received a significant advantage (+2.2 points per game), but since 2011, that benefit has been mitigated. Our findings imply that extra days with practice time, and not extra days off alone, are the primary driver of any NFL rest advantage.

    Keywords: Bayesian modeling, NFL, rest differential, state space, Natural experiment

    Received: 12 Aug 2024; Accepted: 26 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Lopez and Bliss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Michael Lopez, National Football League, New York, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.