After diving into into some of the more interesting names of the college football bowl games in my previous post, I’d like to take a closer look at a handful of the matchups themselves. As meaningless as some of these games are, the on-field product almost always ends up being worth the watch.
Every year, I participate in bowl pick ‘em pools where entrants pick the winners of every game and assign a different number of points to each depending on how confident they are. If there are 41 bowl games, as there are this year, you would assign a different number from 1 to 41 to each game. The game you assign 41 points is the game in which you are most confident, and the game you assign zero is the one in which you are least sure who the winner will be. To determine the winner of the pick ‘em pool, all participants add up the total number of points from the games where they correctly picked the winner, and the person with the highest amount of points is the champion.
ESPN aires their Bowl Mania special every year when the matchups are announced, and they have their “experts” pick each game and assign confidence point values to them. These experts are former players who go on intuition and game tape, rather than analytics like strength of schedule, projected pace of the game, and any other information that would be of significance. This not only prevents the viewers from learning who the legitimately strong teams are, but also results in these experts producing disappointing pick ‘em scores year after year.
Personally, I use a pretty sophisticated system of picking these games that involves six statistical factors based on bowl game data since 2012 (all data from TeamRankings.com – in my opinion the best sports statistics website for in-depth college data). Depending on how these factors add up, I assign a likelihood of victory to each team and use it to make my picks. I’ll compare my pick ‘em scores to those of the ESPN experts when bowl season is over and publish the results.
I’m also fascinated by the betting aspect of the bowl games and the concept of betting on sports in general. While it is a pretty terrible way to try and make some money (and you’ll inevitably end up losing in the long run), the result of how each game plays out compared to how the sports books in Las Vegas project is another layer that makes each game worth viewing. Here are the ten games I will be most likely to watch, and I will include my picks for each.
Las Vegas Bowl – #25 Boise State vs. Oregon
Las Vegas spread: Oregon -5
In a shockingly high-profile game for the first day of bowl season, this is a great game on paper. Two traditionally strong offenses should steal the show, and whichever team can get the last defensive stop may very well come away with the win. Las Vegas has Oregon projected to win by five points, and ESPN experts Greg McElroy, Jonathan Vilma, and Gene Chizik have all pick Oregon with 30, 22, and 7 confidence points, respectively.
I don’t see the outcome being so clearly in Oregon’s favor. The Ducks have slight advantages in strength of schedule and their recent performances, which are important factors. However, the team that averages a higher scoring margin versus their opponents over an entire season is usually a good pick as long as the strength of their schedules is comparable, and Boise State outscored their opponents this year by an average of almost ten points, compared to Oregon’s four. I lean slightly in Boise State’s favor here, giving them two confidence points, and if I were putting money on this game, I would take Boise State straight up at +230 odds (netting $23 on a $10 bet) to beat Oregon.
