Deferring to the Second Half

After going to a few Ravens games I noticed a fairly frequent trend that the stadium seats were fairly empty as people were still buying food/drink or going to the bathroom or in general were meandering back to their seats.

This actually seems to me to be fairly important strategically in a game where the home team relies on the crowd to disrupt the opposition.

The Ravens definitely do, and I think most other NFL teams and certainly several college stadiums do as well. Baltimore used to refer to Memorial Stadium - back when they had the Colts - as "The World's Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum." Even today, the Ravens games frequently draw fervent crowds that are extremely loud. We pride ourselves on forcing offenses to take time-outs because of communication issues and causing false starts at times.

But the first drive in the second half is typically very quiet due to the stands being cleared out at half time. So how much does this typically factor into a team's decision on deferring the kick? I would think every team would want to defer the kick in these situations. Home teams want their offense on the field to allow time for the fans to come back into the seats before their defense gets back on the field. Away teams would want the prospect of a drive that's somewhat quiet to start the half.

I couldn't find statistics on how often teams (college or pro) choose to receive or defer. I only looked for about ten minutes, but Google seems to be unreliable at digging those up. If anyone can find any, I'd appreciate seeing them.

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