College Football Week
This is one of the week’s we had noted before the season began as having college football on virtually every single day. Why watch a game like Central Michigan at Western Michigan (on ESPN 2 tonight 7:30)? Because its college football on a Tuesday night, and you are a sick freak.
Since we have so much college football this week, I am going to crawl out on a limb and unveil my own “predictor” model (with all due respect to Jeff Sagarin). I ought to know better than do this, but what the hell – I too am a sick freak.
A couple of caveats –
- This is a new model. Thus if you use it to do actual wagering, you are an imbecile. Unless, of course, you win.
- If this is totally wrong in one week, the sample size is too small to prove it correct or incorrect. Likewise if it is totally right.
- Take this for what it is – good fun, designed to promote discussion.
All of that said, the model says the following (All points are for a game played on a neutral field)
Tuesday
Central Michigan at Western Michigan. Central Michigan is 6.9 points better.
Wednesday
Ohio at Akron. Ohio is 1.6 points better.
Thursday
Louisville at West Virginia – WVU is 4.5 points better.
TCU at BYU – BYU is 6.1 points better.
Make what adjustments you will for home field advantage.
Mentioned in Austin Murphy's book 
7 comments:
It sounds interesting, but any insight on how it works?
I've read this site for long enough to know you're not just eyeballing the teams and throwing out these numbers. I'm especially interested in the UL/WVU pick, since Louisville plays no defense and WVU's defense is pretty high up there in every statistical category.
Without hitting too much detail, I came up with an equation that calculates points scored to offense/defense adjusted for difficulty.
The UL/WVU pick was closer than I would have thought too Of course, you have to add points to WVU for home field, Sagarin suggests 1.9, Vegas says 3, so say WVU is 7 points better at home.
The reason UL with it's lousy record looks so good is -
1. They average 510 yards offensively per game v 471 for WVU.
2. They have played harder teams than WVU (opponents record 55%winning v. 44% for WVU).
That said, it still makes me nervous.
Actually Sag says the home advantage is 2.47 points this week.
Mergz vs. Vegas v1.0
You had Central Michigan as 6.9 points better.
If you give Western Michigan 3 points for home field, that means you were predicting Central Michigan to win by 3.9 points
Central Michigan won by 3. Not sure what the line was. But your predictor was damned close.
On Ohio at Akron, with a 3 point home advantage, you are favoring Akron by 1.4 points. Akron is the underdog (+3) so you are recommending Akron plus the points.
For Louisville at WVU you are saying that WVU is 7.5 points better than Louisville. Since you have to lay 16.5 to take WVU, you are recommending Louisville.
You are saying BYU is 9.1 points better than TCU. BYU is favored by 7 so you are recommending BYU.
Me versus Vegas?
I knew I shouldn't have done this :)
But since I have, I will be releasing my "Play of the Year" to callers this afternoon. Just call 1-800-IMA-FOOL. The pick is free.
So WVU +4.5 plus 2.5 for home field... Hmm WVU plus 7.
That looks damn good.
WVU 38
LOU 31
Wow...
Every bit of intuition I had looking at that spread of Louisville/WVU said it was wrong. Louisville hanging in, 7 points against WVU? That'll never happen...
Man. Your predictor is pure gold, Mergz. You better start playing Vegas with it...
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