The college football road night game dynamic: Real or imagined?

ATHENS, Ga. — Aaron Murray and his teammates never liked to sit around their hotel room, waiting for hours to leave for the stadium. That was the worst part. Then they would get there, kickoff would approach, the sky was dark, and the lights were on. That atmosphere was something else.

“We could feel the difference in the night games from the fans,” said Murray, Georgia’s starting quarterback from 2010-13. “Just the energy, the excitement, the more drunk they were, probably, the livelier they were going to be in the stadium.”

Murray never lost a home game that started under the lights, a domination that hasn’t stopped: Georgia is 20-0 in prime-time games at home since 2010, the last night loss at Sanford Stadium coming to Kentucky on Nov. 21, 2009.

That’s a big reason for hope for No. 12 Georgia on Saturday as it hosts No. 7 Tennessee in a win-or-else game for the Bulldogs’ College Football Playoff hopes. Also, as good as Josh Heupel has been as Tennessee’s coach, he’s only 7-8 in road games, including 2-4 the past two seasons. The Vols’ lone loss this season, at Arkansas, was a night game.

But is hosting a night game a real advantage, or anecdotal? It depends on who you ask.

Lane Kiffin was adamant a few weeks ago that playing a night game at home was advantageous when the Ole Miss coach complained about not having any night home games in SEC play, while LSU got two.

“I think that’s proven over time – both in NFL and college – that playing at night in electric atmospheres is a home-field advantage and tough when you got to do that as an opposing team,” Kiffin said. “That’s been proven for a long time.”

Ole Miss overcame only getting a 3:30 p.m. ET kickoff to beat Georgia last Saturday. And the coach he beat in that game, Kirby Smart, is skeptical that night kickoffs make that much of a difference, saying that some of the best atmospheres he has had at Georgia were afternoon games. That includes a win over Tennessee two years ago, which kicked off at 3:30 p.m.

“I just think a home game in general in the SEC is hell on the road team. I think it’s really hard, man,” Smart said.

But not always. Alabama just went into Death Valley at night and routed LSU. Smart’s own Georgia team, while it lost at Alabama and eked out a one-point win at Kentucky, won comfortably at Texas under the lights.

In the Smart era, Georgia has lost four home games, and three started at noon: Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech in 2016 and South Carolina in 2019. The other was 3:30 p.m. to Tennessee in 2016, a game the Vols won on a Hail Mary.

In Murray’s case, he compares the atmosphere in his two games at South Carolina: The 2010 game was at noon, while the 2012 game at night. Georgia lost both, and the atmosphere for the visitors was daunting in both, but it was worse in 2012.

“You went to more of a fun energy (in 2010) to, ‘Oh my God, this place is on top of us, swarming us alive’ type of atmosphere,” Murray said. “As an opponent, going in somewhere at night, you feel the energy more too. I don’t know what it is. It’s a completely different feel. It’s louder.”

There is data to back up the night-game effect. But some data offers nuance.

TruMedia looked at the last decade of SEC games that started at 6 p.m. or later and only those when the home team, either ranked or unranked, played a visitor that was ranked in the AP poll. The purpose was to try to gauge the night-game effect in bigger games. The results show that, compared to all other games involving a visiting ranked team, the home team did better at night, both in winning the game and covering the point spread.

What’s more, when the home team was the underdog, it fared better at night than in other games.

Interestingly, TruMedia found a different story in games when the home team was favored against a ranked visiting team. The home teams fared worse in those night games.

Digging deeper, in games that were closer than expected — meaning, the home favorite didn’t cover the spread — those teams went 3-8 outright, compared to 11-9 in non-night games of the same type (home team favored over a ranked visitor). The lesson? Maybe the home favorite gets wound up in closer games in big atmospheres, or the visiting team capable of keeping it close on the road is better at finishing off the game.

That’s the worry for Georgia, which is favored this week by as many as 10 points, in a fluid line with Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava’s status uncertain.

One theory on visiting teams’ struggles centers on the crowd noise affecting the offense’s ability to communicate and make changes at the line of scrimmage. But Murray pointed out that wouldn’t apply as much to Tennessee, which plays at a fast tempo and doesn’t make many checks at the line.

And as much as Murray respects Georgia fans, he thinks the team’s unbeaten record since 2009 has more to do with normal home dynamics and having the better team, rather than anything special about Sanford Stadium. The reason: the acoustics. The stadium is in a more open, spread-out setting, compared to some other SEC stadiums.

“The atmosphere is great. It will get loud, it will get difficult,” Murray said. “But we’re not Knoxville where it’s 100,000 people enclosed and coming down on you. It’s not Baton Rouge. Those stadiums are built to keep sound in, and it’s hell. Georgia’s going to be loud, it’s going to be difficult, but it will never be one of those places because of the way it’s built.”

Still, Murray could see Georgia fans taking it up a notch this week. Smart called them out for not enough crowd noise after the Auburn game. They’ve only had three home games, and they haven’t been big games. This one is different.

That’s why it’s at night.

“A night game signals that it’s an elite matchup, that it’s a really important game. Everyone puts more into it,” Murray said. “We can all say we prepare the same way every single week, obviously the coachspeak, the playerspeak. But I think we all know — and I think the fans are the same way too — you know when “College GameDay” is on your campus, and it’s a night game, and it’s a big-time matchup.

“So I think everyone takes it a little bit more seriously, everyone prepares a little bit more, everyone brings a little more juice. That’s everyone: Players, coaches, fans, the whole shebang.”

Photo: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images