Which Odds Makers Will Get today’s College Bowls Wrong?

Which Odds Makers Will Get today’s College Bowls Wrong?

Again, I am against betting on college sports in the first place. It is unconscionable to put these young people in harm’s way and then to wager money on them.

A more crass perspective is that the odds makers get so much wrong, anyway, that betting on the bowls would be foolish as well as ethically flawed.

 

A holiday for accuracy

As of day before yesterday, it will be remembered, the odds on yesterday’s football bowls were as follows:

Monday, Dec. 30:

  • Middle Tennessee picked over Navy in the Armed Forces Bowl, except when Navy is picked over Middle Tennessee:  Final score: Navy 24, Middle Tennessee 6
  • #10 Oregon favored over Texas in the Alamo Bowl:  Final score: Oregon 30, Texas 7
  • Ole Miss favored, somewhat, over Georgia Tech in the Music City Bowl:  Final score: Mississippi 25, Georgia Tech 17
  • In the Holiday Bowl, #16 Arizona State favored to beat Texas Tech by two touchdowns:  Final score: Texas Tech 37, Arizona State 23

Spread predictions here.

That’s four bowl games. As to win-loss, the sports experts and numbers whizzes guiding movement of dollars in places like Sri Lanka got two wrong. That’s a fifty percent error rate. The predictions were wildly wrong on Texas Tech, almost as wildly wrong on Navy.

Even when the odds makers picked the winner correctly–twice out of four tries–they got the depth of the win wrong once–that would be once out of two tries. Oregon’s score and win were substantially underestimated. For the pickers who correctly chose Navy, Navy’s score and win were also under-predicted.

So as of today, nineteen games have been played on the NCAA football bowl schedule. Out of nineteen, six picks have been wrong. Of the winning teams and right picks, six or seven of the favored, depending on how you count them, were favored too narrowly to be realistic. The prognosticators’ ratio has gotten worse since yesterday morning.

Going forward

So–on to the next college bowl games: How will the next picks hold up?

Today’s bowl games:

As to yesterday’s picks, the tentative hypotheses sketched in yesterday’s post only partly hold up. The most remotely, wildly wrong projection for yesterday’s bowls was that Arizona State would beat Texas Tech. This one was way off in spite of the fact that a lot of people cared about/paid attention to the game (compared to several other bowls), and in spite of the fact that TT (Big 12) and Arizona State (Pac-12) are both members of highly rated conferences. On the other hand, the game between Ole Miss (SEC) and Georgia Tech was competently predicted, bearing out the hypotheses.

Conjecture aside, the Holiday Bowl had downsides and upsides. One plus, among others, was  Reginald Davis, with an inspiring biography. He is also from my late parents’ tiny home town (mispronounced on air), although the only time I have been back to Tenaha in recent years was for my mother’s funeral. (Law enforcement personnel in Tenaha, Texas, were in the news in a much less joyous context recently, to my horror and amazement.)

 

Davis in high school

On the down side, Tre Porter was injured, out with a concussion. I hope Texas Tech does everything it can for his recovery.

 

Porter helped off field after concussion

Meanwhile, the Holiday Bowl is sponsored by online National University, one of the numerous digital diploma mills proliferating in the U.S. Another example of cognitive dissonance in the news media: on one hand, we have a torrent of news stories about tech surveillance by the NSA, CIA, and the military-technological-industrial conference over-all, particularly after the document conveyances by Edward Snowden. On the other hand, we have a torrent of digital universities–and of traditional universities pushing to get more online all the time. No thought or fear of the inevitable loss of privacy in cyberspace is allowed to intrude on the commerce of getting money from students and parents. One by-product of reverencing all that is ‘digital’ is that faculty are ever more reduced in the university big picture. Another is that our students are losing more and more of the social interaction with faculty that they come into college desperately needing. Mammals, including humans, are social creatures. These are larger topics for another time. For now, it is worth pointing out that anyone who knows the word ‘keystroke’ should know that there is no guarantee of privacy or of secure information in getting your education online. The headline focus on Snowden has not yet illuminated this point.

Today’s question: Who will get today’s bowls wrong?

 

More to come.

Which Odds Makers Will Get today’s College Bowls Wrong?

Which Odds Makers Will Get today’s College Bowls Wrong?

Thirty-five 2013-2014 college bowls in football, some with bowl names that make parody difficult if not impossible. The sheer number of bowls (35) goes beyond satire. So it seems productive, as well as fair, to take a quick look at one of the least savory aspects of this high-skill, high-speed, high-injury activity, and review the picks and the odds makers.

 

NIU: wrong guess

Where bowls go, the odds makers follow. As of this writing, the picks and favored have been mostly right. But rather narrowly. Fifteen games have been played on the NCAA football bowl schedule so far. Of the fifteen, four picks have been wrong. Of the winning teams and right picks, four of the favored were damned with faint praise–favored, but not by near enough to be realistic.

 

Las Vegas

Saturday, Dec. 21, was the worst day for the pickers. That Saturday gave us the Las Vegas Bowl, the New Mexico Bowl, the Idaho Potato Bowl, and the New Orleans Bowl.

Monday, Dec. 23, more importantly my brother’s birthday, gave us the Beef O’Brady’s Bowl: Ohio versus East Carolina (20-37). At least East Carolina was favored, although it won by more. Picks more right than wrong, arguably.

Christmas Eve Tuesday took us to the Hawaii Bowl, with Boise State versus Oregon State (23-38).

The line on Oregon State was three, and some writers picked Boise State. Oregon State won by fifteen.

Inadequate prognostication. Not by enough.

Pitt and pizza

Thursday, Dec. 26, took us the Poinsettia Bowl and to the Little Caesars Bowl.

Friday, Dec. 27, offered the Military Bowl, the Texas Bowl, and the Fight Hunger Bowl. The customary pronunciation of that last one is ‘fight hunger‘, with the stress on the latter word, meaning to combat the sad ill of people going without food. One sportscaster, doused in testosterone, called it ‘the fight hunger bowl’.

  • Marshall was favored to beat Maryland in the Military Bowl and did, 31-20. An easy call, and they got it right.
  • In the Texas Bowl, in Houston, Minnesota was favored over Syracuse by four or more. At the final, Syracuse won by 21-17. Prediction not very close. One forecaster did have some astute comments, and predicted right.
  • In the Fight Hunger Bowl, regardless how you pronounce it, Washington was rightly favored over BYU, and won 31-16. Another easy call that they got right.

Saturday, Dec. 28, brought the Pinstripe Bowl, the Belk Bowl, the Russell Athletic Bowl, and the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl.

  • Ranked [?] team #25[?] Notre Dame was favored to win over Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl and did, 29-16. The predictions were right.
  • In North Carolina’s Belk Bowl, North Carolina was favored, but not by nearly enough. The 39-17 defeat of Cincinnati was more lopsided even than the score indicated, let alone the predictions. Some sentimentalists picked Cincinnati. We need another Cincinnatus today, but the guess is still wrong.
  • Speaking of lopsided, in the Russell Athletic Bowl Louisville was picked over Miami, but again not by enough. Final score Louisville 36, Miami 9.
  • Prognosticators were on more solid ground in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, picking Kansas State comfortably over Michigan. Kansas State won 31-14.

 

Bridgewater

What does a non-football expert take away from all this? Well, not too much. Some possible or tentative hypotheses:

1) Strong loyalties might make for wrong predictions. But on the strict thumbs-up-thumbs-down of picking the winning and losing team in a game, big-time indifference does not seem to make for accuracy. The better guesses came in games that more people care about. The bowls fewer people cared about, such as the New Orleans Bowl with two Louisiana teams and the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl that ran out of pizza for media, got picked/predicted wrong. Maybe more heads are better than fewer.

2) Other things being equal, the picks either did go or might as well have gone by conference. On the whole, the stronger the conference, the more likely an accurate pick. SEC schools have of course not played yet, since the best bowls have yet to come–more on that, later. But Colorado State was correctly picked over Washington State (Pac-12), Kansas State (Big 12) over Michigan (Big Ten), and Notre Dame (ACC) over Rutgers. It will be interesting to see whether this pattern, if it is a pattern, holds up for more bowls in which teams from strong conferences play each other. But in the meantime, it’s beginning to look as though either objectivity is overrated, or indifference doesn’t make for objectivity (accuracy). Maybe more resources of time and attention do make a difference in quality of prognostications . . .

3) For an expert gambler, it would make more sense to bet on the prognosticators than on college football.

For the record, this writer is against betting on college sports in the first place. To have the governors of two states wager a bushel of oysters against a bushel of corndogs, or whatever, is one thing. To wager money on the bones and brains of guys often not old enough to drink (legally) is another.

Also for the record, I have come around to the view that college football players should be paid. The laborer is worthy of his hire. After many years of holding the opposite position, I have switched. Partly this is the influence of reading articles by The Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins.

Back to this season’s bowl games: How will the next picks hold up?

Odds as of Dec. 29.

Spread predictions here.

ScreenShot December 30th bowls

Coming up today and tonight, we have,

Monday, Dec. 30:

Who will get today’s games wrong?

 

More to come.