Evidence suggests that our athletic performance follows a circadian rhythm. One study carefully controlled for sleep amounts, ambient temperature, and other factors in the performance of trained swimmers. Researchers instructed the participants to swim 200m at different hours of the day, across the whole day. They found that the fastest times were achieved late at night (11p), and their worst times were early in the morning (4-6a) - around the body temperature nadir.
In contrast, most other studies I found concluded that performance peaked in the late afternoon or early evening hours. It has even been reported that most (sport) world records are broken around this time. This finding may be biased, since major events are often held in the afternoon and evening to get higher TV ratings. Nevertheless, studies that try to control for this still show the same trend.
A group at Stanford saw these findings and wondered if it could predict night game outcomes for traveling teams. If peak performance is indeed in the late afternoon and early evening, then west coast teams should always have an advantage over east coast teams in night games: the game start time (say, 9p EST) will always be closer to their circadian peak in performance than that of the east coast team. With this hypothesis, the group looked at 25 years of Monday Night Football records in the NFL.
It turns out they were correct: not only did the west coast teams win more often by more points, but they also beat the Las Vegas point spread by a statistically significant amount.
Something to keep in mind for next season!
Sources:
Kline et al. J Appl Physiol 102, 2007.
Drust et al. Chronobiology International 22, 2005.
Smith et al. Sleep 20, 1997.
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