Bowl Games and the Spread

by user Leftyloon

As promised last week for all you degenerates, here are the results for how certain team characteristics predict bowl winners against the spread. If you don't feel like reading the last post, here's a quick refresher. The sample size is every bowl game from the past 6 seasons (2000-2005). I determined how often the team with the better overall record, point differential, conference record, offense (rated by points scored) and defense (rated by points allowed) won the bowl game against the spread. In the interest of staving off premature blindness and causing confusion, I will eschew year by year results and just hit you with the cumulative data.

Better Record: 62-62-3 .500

Better Point Differential: 69-87-3 .443

Better Conference Record: 47-63-3 .429

Better Offense: 64-93-3 .409

Better Defense: 75-81-3 .481

Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Neither characteristic predicts bowl spread coverers (for lack of a better term) with any accuracy. Looks like Vegas wins again. But wait. When you dig a little deeper and separate each category into underdogs and favorites something does show up.

Better Record

Dog: 28-40 .412

Favorite: 34-22-3 .602

Better Point Differential

Dog: 21-64 .247

Favorite: 48-23-3 .669

Better Conference Record

Dog: 24-36 .400

Favorite: 23-27-3 .462

Better Offense

Dog: 24-62 .279

Favorite: 40-31-3 .561

Better Defense

Dog: 30-55 .353

Favorite: 45-26-3 .628

For the most part, in every category except better conference record, underdogs perform very poorly, but favorites perform quite well. Why is this so? I can't really come up with any ideas off the cuff, but the phenomenon does seem to exist. So if hypothetically, the Sun Bowl matches up two teams, and the team with the better record (or point differential, or offense, or defense) is also the favorite, they might be a good play. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but if you do use this knowledge to win a substantial, any donations will be accepted.

Date

Fri 07/28/06, 5:09 pm EST

ChristofMVP

1220 days ago

Score 0

We really should not be allowed to gamble on college sports events. Betting on college sports crosses a line that should not be cross.

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LeftyloonJV Squad

1220 days ago

Score 0

I'm not making any moral judgements. The degenerates remark was tongue-in-cheek. I'm merely pointing out an interesting phenomena.

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ASwaffAll-American

1219 days ago

Score 0

Just a guess about conference records - when playing in conference, you're facing coaches and players that you face much more regularly than in bowl games or non-conference games. Sometimes, one coach just has another coach's number, so that even a great team might find it difficult to beat teams that don't play near the same level (like Oklahoma State against Oklahoma, or Cal against USC). That is probably compounded by mid-majors that dominate weak conferences, only to lose to someone who had a worse record in a better conference, like a Texas Tech or a Louisville.

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