Commissioner’s Notes

Another week down and we’re now nearing the halfway mark. College football had some close wins across the board and some… not-so-close wins. FSU’s coaching search needs to be in full gear at the start of business on Monday. Georgia should be the unanimous #1, Florida sucks, and Indiana is a bitter disappointment, but not as much as Virginia Tech, Texas, LSU, or any of the many teams that could’ve flipped this week for me.

This week, we had the second-closest week in the PVPs, with the White pod stealing two wins by a combined 23 points. Dylan separated himself from the pack by all three metrics, but Bob and I aren’t totally out of reach. There are 13 weeks in the season, so next week, at the midpoint, I’ll do a more comprehensive review of where we fit in the standings. For this week, we’ll look into the spreads.

Games of the week

• Tuesday – FIU @ Jacksonville State. These teams were the winners of two top C-USA matchups this past Wednesday, so this is another big matchup with CCG implications. FIU still has Liberty and Kennesaw State later in the season, so they probably need this one much more than Jacksonville State does.
• Wednesday – either? None of these are great teams. These 4 teams have a combined win total of 5, so somebody has to win, but the more closely matched game by FPI and spread is Western Kentucky @ Sam Houston.
• Thursday – again, some pretty lopsided games. Go do a hobby and skip these. If you have to pick one, maybe go with Colorado State @ Texas State. These seem like ever-so-slightly better teams.
• Friday – App State @ Coastal Carolina. These are two teams that have struggled a bit but are pretty close.
• Saturday Noon – Ohio State @ Indiana. I’m not the highest on Indiana, but they’re still good and I expect this to be a good game.
• Saturday Afternoon – Third Saturday in October, with an honorable mention to Missouri @ Ole Miss. TSIO could get out of hand if the Tennessee offense does not make massive improvements over the next 6 days.
• Saturday Primetime – Notre Dame @ BYU, the Battle of the Religious Avatars. BYU looks like a paper tiger to me, but they’re by far ND’s biggest test so far.
• Saturday Late Night – none again; these are all expected blowouts. Go to bed.

PVP Matchups

• #1 Dylan (5-1) vs #2 Zach (4-2)
• #3 Bob (3-3) vs #6 Jacob (1-5)
• #4 Bruce (3-3) vs #5 Dan (2-4)

Looking at the spreads

As you may have noticed from watching the scoreboards over the weeks, the projected outcomes very often do not match up with what happens. This game is often won or lost on a team here or there that’s a 3-point favorite losing by 3 touchdowns or winning by 30. This week, I looked at our various performances vs the spread and looked for places where a few really bad games or weeks ruined somebody.

Here we see the outcome of every game we played, showing predicted margin (i.e., inverse spread) vs actual margin. Most games really do line up right along the expected line, but there are some clear outliers.

There are few, if any, really good conclusions you can draw from that; it’s mostly noise, but you can find patterns if you look long enough. One thing I notice is that I’m slightly overrepresented in the right-of-the-line games with high spreads (i.e., favorites doing even better than expected) as well as the left-of-the-line games with low spreads (i.e., toss-ups where the slight favorite got blown out). This likely explains why it always feels like I’m losing in the most frustrating games but am still high in the standings.

On a weekly basis, everybody has had a week where the odds gods have been out to get them. Jacob and Bruce are the worst off in this regard, which explains why they’re trailing. Dylan’s best weeks and most of his net positive spreads are from the last two weeks, which likewise explains his surge. Below is everyone’s week-by-week and cumulative performance vs the spread.

In PVP matchups, against-the-spread results have shifted several matchups, especially recently. There have been 20 total games that could have shifted the PVP wins, including 9 this week. This week’s games are listed in the table below; 5 games each had bigger ATS differences than the total margin between Bruce and Jacob, and 4 between Bob and me.

Finally, we’ll take a quick glance at the biggest offenders for beating and missing the spread.

The top teams vs the spread average 9.3-19.4 points per game better than the spread. Unsurprisingly, Dylan is the most represented here with 5 of them. Jacob and Bruce have only 2 and 1, respectively.

In the bottom teams, these losers are missing expectations by 5.3-13.0 points per game. Again, no surprise who has these: Bruce and Jacob lead, Dylan and Dan trail. Coincidentally, both Bob and I are well represented in both.

And lastly, one interesting aspect to look at is teams that are missing in either direction. These are landmines. It doesn’t help much if a team is a 10-point underdog and wins by 10 and then the next week is a 10-point favorite and loses by 10. You need some degree of consistency and reliability to even be able to confidently pick them on a weekly basis. The top 10 hot and cold teams are listed below by the sum of their absolute divergence from the spread. These are the teams that will burn you one week and save you the next.