Wow, 5 months in the making and now I have to put this whole thing to paper or computer or whatever. I'll try to be succinct, organized, and helpful...but some or most of you may not care. I'm trying to share what I learned over the last 5 months to help us all - take it for what it's worth.
First - why am I doing this? It should be fairly obvious...on our front page I have last year's standings...118-137 last year 46%...yep, not a winner. Even our champion Mr. Roe only went 132-123 for 51%...not a winner in Vegas, but a winner with us. So I sat down and said, how can a guy improve on this and avoid those painstaking decisions every week that I undoubtably second and third and fourth guess myself on until finally submitting a pick. Well, one thing I was going with is my Thursday night rule...bet the home team - it's f*cking simple, just pick the home team no matter what - especially an underdog. I wanted to find more rules like this so my picks could be more accurate and I could win more and have something to show for the ridiculous amount of time I put into this great sport each week. So without further adieu, here we go:
1. I started by taking every game from last year and figuring out if maybe it actually as simple as "bet the home team"...it's not.
Home-Road, FAV-DOG both ended at nearly 50/50 splits for the year, so if you're happy with 50%, then read no further and just pick one way to go and follow it religiously. But I'm shooting for 75%, so I moved on to some more analysis.
2. I made a list of rules, I figured by looking at the schedules and results from last year I should be able to come to some conclusions - listed below:
- Rule 1 - Bet home team on Thursday night: 14-4 in 2008, road FAV never covered
- Rule 2 - Rivalry Games - pick the DOG, unless it is a HUGE mismatch (OSU-MICH 08)
- Rule 3 - Coach Situations - 1st year guys struggle in the first 4-6 games, exiting coaches or presumed to be exiting coaches typically cover at the end of the season
- Rule 4 - Opening Weekend - bet against the big off-season hype team in the year's 1st big game (ALA over CLEM, USC over AUB a few years back...)
- Rule 5 - BCS Busters - Identify these teams early and bet them ever week(Boise, TCU, Utah, Ball St. in 2008 went 37-12 ATS (against the spread)
- Rule 6 - Team Expectations/Tradition - Bet against traditonal powers having a down year (AUB 2008), bet against extremely bad BCS teams (WASH, WASU: 5-19 ATS), bet for Nat'l title contenders (FLA, OK, PSU, TEX, ALA: 50-12 ATS)
- Rule 7 - Conference Games - in a parody conference (ACC in 2008) always take the points if it's >7
- Rule 8 - Let down Rule - after a Major BCS team's first loss of the season or loss in a big game they will have another non-cover soon after especially on the road
- Rule 9 - Power Rating Rule - this is the final rule, and it's when I realized where I needed to spend my time throughout the season...using my power rankings at the end of the season I would have hit 78% if I had used them for every game at the start of the year...so nailing these at the beginning of the season is the key and just do some minor tweaking throughout the season.
What are my power ratings, you may ask? Well, I assign each of the 120 teams a ranking 1-12 at the beginning of the year and use this to determine what I think the spread would/should be for every game throughout the year. 1 full point = a TD, 1/2 a point = a FG (3.5 to be exact). For example...MN is a 6.5 at WIS who was a 7...plus adding in an extra 1/2 point for the home team I have the line at WIS -7...actual line was WIS -13.5, so I pick the Gophers and make cash.
So my next question is how can I make the power ratings more accurate and what drives them? Well, this is where I had to dig in and find some key indicators to figure out why these ratings would change and how to predict them. I found a very telling correlation between point differential and power rating...like almost a 95% correlation - so that was it, point differential - figure out where that will be and we should know how a team will perform.
This was challenging simply because there are so many moving parts to these numbers. But I narrowed it down to a few keys indicators for overall performance, offense, and defense.
OVERALL
- Turnovers - impossible to predict, but it can help you gauge if a team was lucky or unlucky last year based on how this net # turned out. For example - MN was a -15 in 2007, obviously you have to think that will turn around and they ended up being a +12 in 2008...and their point differential went from -11 to even...a 1.5 point swing in the power ratings.
- Is there room to improve? An offense that averages 35+ is at the peak and really, no matter what, shouldn't expect to improve and therefore their offense could only be worse the upcoming year. Same goes for a defense that gives up 20 or less.
OFFENSE
- QB - obviously a huge component - returning starter is good, upperclassman is good - conversely starting a freshman is bad, or a first time starter is bad...remember these are just generalizations and all factors work together toward the overall pt. diff change.
- OL Returning - how many starters are back? this is huge.
- New OC/HC within the last 3 years - can have a huge impact on which direction the pts. scored goes for a team based on scheme and coaching acumen
DEFENSE
- DL/LB returning - DL is most important, but overall front 7 is also an indicator
- New HC/DC last 3 years - same as above, can completely change a team's performance
One other over arching note is strength of schedule - this doesn't have much of an impact as some people think, but it can add an extra W or L is your schedule changes drastically from year to year.
Now when looking at these numbers obviously it's impossible to say, "new OC, they should score an extra 1 point per game." What I am looking for is the large measureable changes...7+ points one way or another. In 2008, this amounted to about 30 teams getting a drastically worse offense and 30 being drastically better. Defensively, there were less changes, only about 20 increases and 10-15 decreases.
Here are some examples to explain what I'm talking about:
AUBURN was a 6.5 in 2007, starting a 1st year Soph QB in 08 = BAD, 5 OL coming back = good, brand new OC with new scheme = BAD, 5 of front 7 back on D = good, new DC = not sure. So with the new QB and new scheme, the offense dropped 7 points from 2007 and the defense was the same....AUB 2008 rating was a 5.5, one full point below.
Obviously, this doesn't work out beautifully for every team, there is some subjective work that goes on, but that's what makes it fun. For example - USC
2007 - rated an 8 at 11-2, +17 in points (33-16) - brought back a new starter at QB (Jr) = bad?, 1 OL returning = bad, 4 of front 7 back = indifferent, no new coaching = good. So with all of this, you'd think the offense would maybe drop off a bit and the defense would hold. What happened? Offense added an extra 5 ppg, defense allowed 8 fewer ppg for a +13, but I actually had them ranked as an 11 for 2008. Some teams just have so much talent that they can overcome the lack of experience in some situations - this is one of those exceptions.
WV, as another example, was an 8.5 in 2007 (40-18) +13 in TO, returning Sr at QB, 5 OL back, 4 of front 7 back, but a brand new coach and OC. They dropped to a 7 in 2008 and pt.diff went to a +8 instead of a +22. Really the only change was the offense was 16 ppg worse...but why? Great QB, 5 OL back, but they have a new coach who is not good...so we have to apply weights to the different factors if they have this kind of impact. These weights can very for each situation, and I don't actually compute them but I do try to walk through them in my head when coming up with the final rating.
Also - these ratings can change throughout the year with QB injuries/changes. Or any OL/DL injuries. Other than that they should stay pretty stable.
Confused yet? Well, I just felt that I had to share this background for how I will be rating out each team coming into the 2009 season before I shared the team previews in the upcoming summer weeks. For a final reference, here's a look at how the B10 ratred out in 2008, and how what kind of record I would have had betting on them with these ratings throughout the year:
- ILL - 6.5 (9-2)
- IND - 4.5 (9-2)
- IOWA - 8 (7-4) - they got much better as the year went on, so I try to get the most accurate based upon the end of the year
- MICH - 4.5 (10-2)
- MSU - 7 (11-1)
- MN - 6.5 (9-2)
- NW - 7.5 (7-4)
- OSU - 9 (9-2)
- PSU - 9.5 (9-2)
- PUR - 6 (9-2)
- WIS - 7 (9-2)
That's a 98-25 record, or cut in half since most of these games were against each other 49-13 or 79%...that's how you make money and that's what I'm shooting for.
So, now you know. You might be asking yourself, what exactly do I know?
- Tree has devoted way too much of his time to this.
- There is a way to win at betting on NCAA football without being lucky
- All of my secrets for how I will be building my bankroll this year
- I will be doing all of this work and providing guidance throughout the year, but I did finish in last place in 2008 so do you listen or continue to go with your gut?
- Season previews starting with the SEC coming soon.
Longest post ever. Hopefully you find some time on Friday when there is nothing else going on and you get a chance to read it. Happy weekend - I'll see a lot of you at JG's on Saturday, so until then....some intense PJ (SAVE YOU), which might be me Saturday night when JG tries to get me to leave!
Gonna save you fucker,....not gonna lose you
Feeling cocky and strong,.. can't let you go,...
Too important to me
Too important to us,... we'd be lost without you
Baby, let yourself fall,... I'm right below you now
And fuck me if I say something you don't wanna hear
And fuck if you only hear what you wanna hear
Fuck me if I care,... but I'm not leaving here
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