BCS bowl lines are crazy

[MyTurn2Raise]

Yep...the Penn St D will look great as usual

[MCS]

[ QUOTE ]
Have you had much success betting on lines that are far off from the predictor?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, I haven't even been studying sports betting for more than a year or so. But I have been watching predictor for a while, especially in college basketball, where I use it for NCAA pools and contests and such.

I also used it to predict football games for contests, and impress my friends when I picked an "upset" that really wasn't an upset at all according to Sagarin.

Then when I actually discovered betting lines, I was shocked at how well they generally matched up. Three of these games are off by 5.5 or more, and that's extremely unusual.

In fact, I don't remember ever seeing ANY lines as far off as 6.5, except for in cases where injuries were obviously a major factor. That's what freaks me out so much here.

[lastchance]

The Predictor can't be a TD off, right? Some of those lines look really, really good.

Even if Georgia is at LSU's level, it's still -1.5 in favor of WVU.

I think WVU is incredibly underrated, and I'd bet them very, very hard.

Same with Texas. And I believe FSU is overrated, because of how they dominated Va Tech.

[ML4L]

[ QUOTE ]

In fact, I don't remember ever seeing ANY lines as far off as 6.5, except for in cases where injuries were obviously a major factor. That's what freaks me out so much here.

[/ QUOTE ]

I went through a stretch where I compared all lines to the predictor, and it was not uncommon on a weekend with a full slate of games for 5 or more games to be 10+ points off the predictor line. Some of these skews are injury-related as you said. Most others occur with big numbers, where it is unclear to me how well predictor accounts for the marginal decrease in the value of points as a line increases. But, that having been said, there are generally a couple games a week where, for example, predictor says Team A -1 and the line is Team A +10.5.

At a quick glance, here's one of that nature from bowl season:

NC State vs. S. Florida

Predictor: S. Fla -3
Line: NCSU -6.5

Some of that difference is probably "home field" for NCSU since the game is in Charlotte. But, it is still around a TD off...

Also, for whatever it's worth, from my informal research, it didn't appear that blindly playing picks that had value according to predictor was a solid strategy. Didn't really look at it in-depth or have a good sample size, however...

Just food for thought...

ML4L

[MCS]

Hmmm. Interesting. I don't have a big enough sample size either. I used it largely for ESPN.com games where you have to pick winners and assign confidence levels, and it did very well there. However, I suppose it's possible that it was off on like one game a week, but that I would never have known because that's just not a lot of data.

I always paid more attention to college basketball than college football. I suspect there is less variance in basketball scores; it's a lot more common to have misleading score margins in football. Also, there may be more data in basketball or the teams may be more connected.

It's interesting that you found so many games that were off. I'll have to start looking at more games. Because I really haven't seen what you have, but I assume that you looked at many more.

[MyTurn2Raise]

W Virginia this year

Sun, Sep 4 at Syracuse W 15-7 --
Sat, Sep 10 Wofford W 35-7 --
Sat, Sep 17 at Maryland W 31-19 --
Sat, Sep 24 East Carolina W 20-15 --
Sat, Oct 1 (12) Virginia Tech L 17-34 --
Sat, Oct 8 at Rutgers W 27-14 --
Sat, Oct 15 (15) Louisville W 46-44 --
Sat, Oct 22 at South Florida Ppd. --
Wed, Nov 2 Connecticut W 45-13 --
Wed, Nov 9 at Cincinnati W 38-0 --
Thu, Nov 24 Pittsburgh W 45-13 --
Sat, Dec 3 at South Florida W 28-13 --


I still have absolutely no clue as to how they stack up against the top 15 in the land, but my guess is not good.

[noggindoc]

[ QUOTE ]
With the speed edge gone from the Nittany Lion offense, I'm skeptical they will adjust well.[ QUOTE ]


What do you mean? Have you seen how fast the "other" receivers are? And the "speed edge" (if you mean Williams) has been gone since the Michigan game, didn't seem to hurt them in the games that followed.

[ QUOTE ]
I think tOSU is awesome, but highly question the rest of the league.[ QUOTE ]


Did you see the PSU tOSU game?

[ QUOTE ]
IMO, FSU played a much more difficult schedule.[ QUOTE ]


Maybe close, but certainly not "much more" difficult. And come on, they lost FOUR of those games.

[MyTurn2Raise]

My point is that Penn St only faced two decent defenses all year--scored 17 against Ohio St and 25 against Michigan. PSU had 78 yards passing and 126 rushing against tOSU. PSU had 239 yard passing and 184 rushing verse Michigan. Only 1 turnover in those two games combined by the Nittany Lions.

Since the Michigan game, the Nittany Lions played Illinois, Purdue, Wisconsin, and Michigan State who are not exactly the fearsome foursome, especially on defense. PSU had a decided speed edge across all positions in the big10 for every game but the two mentioned above. That will disappear against the Noles. Will PSU adjust?

While tOSU defense is better than FSU IMO, they are not as fast nor as capable of making good teams turn the ball over. If PSU holds their turnovers down, they'll win. 2 or more turnovers and I see big problems covering.

The Big10 is very, very overrated. Look at the non-conference games played by each team. There is only one impressive win; Michigan State at Notre Dame. No other team had an impressive non-conference performance (unless you count Wisky @ North Carolina and Illinois v Rutgers) and some were downright unimpressive.

The fallacy is that when tOSU and Michigan are near the top of the conference, it's considered good. IMO, the big ten is the 4th best major conference this year. I came into the year with high hopes for the conference, but they just didn't materialize. The SEC, ACC, and Pac-10 were better, some by a wide margin.

[holeplug]

So how did Sagarin predict the USC/Oklahoma game from last year?

[holeplug]

Turn I think your reading waaaaaaaaaaay too much into that Virginia Tech game. You watched the Clemson and Forida games right?