Thursday, September 3, 2015

College Football Math: Week 1

College football begins today and we've got a great set of games to kick off the season, including South Carolina vs. North Carolina, potentially awesome upset Minnesota vs. TCU, and of course Michigan at Utah.

Week 1 is an interesting panda. I know this is obvious, but it really is the first chance to actually see teams on the field, and for the teams who play real games, you learn a lot. The models (mine, Vegas, anyone else) will likely never be more wrong about some teams/games than they are this week, team ratings will likely never bounce around again as much as after this week. We're all learning about the teams together and it's so exciting.

I've been in Vegas the past 4 days, so I'm not as ready as I'd like to be, but I do have a schedule put together, and will continue to add more. Before we get to the top games and the full schedule (both below), some things to note:
  • A team is shaded green according to their chance to win (darker = better chance)
  • I'm experimenting with new names for the Watchability index. I really like the idea behind that number, but the name has never sat very well. I'm currently testing out Game Quality, which I like for its simplicity. Don't hesitate to share comments on the new name or suggestions for other names
  • Game Quality (formerly Watchability) is a combined measure of how good the teams are and how likely the game is to be close. Put another way: it's an estimate of how likely the game is to be a close, well-contested game
  • This post has more detail on the math behind Game Quality
 
Top games:






All games:

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