Not quite the Aggies that I was thinking about
Today is the beginning of the FBS College Bowl season with six bowl games playing today. I spent an afternoon about a week ago scraping win-loss stats on college football games so decided to apply the original model I had used on NFL games on bowl games. The table below shows win probabilities of the first week of games through Friday, December 21st. I’ll update the next week of games after that.
Part of me wanting to do this was to enter into ESPN’s Capital One Bowl Mania Challenge. I’ve never participated before, but I figured I’d had some data-driven results to my picks as presented in this table.
| Bowl | Teams | Model | Vegas | Difference | Predicted Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Celebration Bowl | North Carolina A&T Aggies | 98.76% | 75.02% | 23.74% | |
| 15-Dec | Alcorn State Braves | 1.24% | 27.93% | -26.69% | 55 |
| Cure Bowl | Tulane Green Wave | 49.68% | 61.54% | -11.86% | |
| 15-Dec | Louisiana Ragin’ Cajuns | 50.11% | 41.32% | 8.79% | 59 |
| New Mexico Bowl | Utah State Aggies | 89.97% | 73.31% | 16.66% | |
| 15-Dec | North Texas Mean Green | 10.03% | 29.59% | -19.56% | 66 |
| Las Vegas Bowl | Arizona State Sun Devils | 3.60% | 33.22% | -29.62% | |
| 15-Dec | Fresno State Bulldogs | 96.40% | 69.74% | 26.66% | 44 |
| Camellia Bowl | Georgia Southern Eagles | 50.40% | 61.27% | -10.87% | |
| 15-Dec | Eastern Michigan Eagles | 49.60% | 41.67% | 7.93% | 46 |
| New Orleans Bowl | Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders | 7.14% | 30.77% | -23.63% | |
| 15-Dec | Appalachian State Mountaineers | 92.86% | 72.15% | 20.71% | 45 |
| Boca Raton Bowl | UAB Blazers | 56.86% | |||
| 18-Dec | Northern Illinois Huskies | 43.14% | 36 | ||
| Frisco Bowl | San Diego State Aztecs | 17.00% | 44.44% | -27.44% | |
| 19-Dec | Ohio Bobcats | 83.00% | 58.51% | 24.49% | 50 |
| Gasparilla Bowl | Marshall Thundering Herd | 61.46% | |||
| 20-Dec | South Florida Bulls | 38.54% | 50 | ||
| Bahamas Bowl | Florida International Golden Panthers | 27.80% | 33.22% | -5.42% | |
| 21-Dec | Toledo Rockets | 72.20% | 69.74% | 2.46% | 77 |
| Idaho Potato Bowl | Western Michigan Broncos | 7.10% | 20.92% | -13.82% | |
| 21-Dec | BYU Cougars | 92.90% | 82.03% | 10.87% | 55 |
As you can see my model is fairly confident (90% or above) in at least four games, five if you round up the New Mexico Bowl for the Utah State Aggies. It will be interesting to see if I’m correct on those since the Brier score will be very high if I’m wrong!
And, if you’re curious, I have already run the numbers on the College Football Playoff games. They may or may not change depending on whether I can procure more data for the model. So at the moment, I have Clemson with a 96.9% chance of beating Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl on December 29th. And I have Alabama with a 99.61% chance of beating Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl on that same day.
Just out of curiosity, thinking that they’re might be some inherent bias with my model towards teams that are undefeated, I took a look at the Fiesta Bowl where the LSU Tigers take on the undefeated University of Central Florida (UCF) on January 1st. In that game, I have LSU with a 70.85% chance of beating UCF. Maybe not such a big deal after all.
Have a good day filled with football. Six college games and two NFL games. Definitely can’t be bored today!