šµ End of Season Bankroll
Good morning and happy conference championship week!
I canāt believe weāre already here. Games start tomorrow night at 8 pm with the Pac-12 championship between Oregon and Utah. This is a game we saw just two weeks ago that Utah won in dominant fashion. Are we due for a repeat? I canāt imagine so, but weāll see.
Before we get into the rest of the games and numbers, I wanted to wrap up Eloās regular-season performance.
Overall, Elo netted a nearly $400 profit on 395 bets this season for a decent 10% rate of return. Thatās right folks: if you bet every week this year, youād be $400 (or maybe $40 with $1 bets) richer. Now, 395 bets are a lot of bets to be placing during the season, and if youāre like me, you probably did some weeks and skipped others, or took some of the recommendations and ignored others, which means itās very possible to come out negative. If you missed weeks 6 and 8, you arenāt nearly as profitable.
So we can definitely do better next year, ideally by minimizing the number of bets you need to place, and relying on more data, and getting more certainty in our numbers.
The top 3 most profitable games of the year to bet on were Louisiana Monroe +1050 over Troy ($105 profit), Illinois (thatās just mean) +1050 over PSU ($105 profit), and Rice +1000 over UAB ($100 profit). Those winners had Elo win probabilities of 26%, 19%, and 10%, respectively. Remember, unlikely does not mean never.
Did you make or lose money this season on college football? Did Elo ratings hurt or help you? Send us an email and let us know how your season went.
Okay, onto this weekās games.
Week 14
So it looks like thereās plenty of value to go around. Elo has all the games fairly close, which makes sense for championship week. Two games that it really disagrees on are Alabama-Georgia and Michigan-Iowa. Iām not saying I completely agree with Elo, but Iām saying it has a point! Alabama is a legendary school, and despite how it looked, they got to yet another SEC championship (I was going to say āfor the Xth straight yearā, but they didnāt make it just 2 years ago when LSU won the National Championship!). Oh, and theyāre coached by indisputably the greatest college football coach of all time, so anyone saying Alabama doesnāt stand a chance hasnāt watched what Alabama does in games like this over the past decade. I wouldnāt be surprised if some no-name backup QB for Alabama comes in and puts up 40 on Georgia. That seems to be the Saban way. But weāll see what happens. Either way, Alabama as an underdog is always intriguing, no matter how good the other team looked against *checks notes* Georgia Techā¦
Same goes for Oregon. Do you really expect them to watch the film from the Utah game and then let the exact same thing happen again? I donāt think so. I would say take the spread for Oregon, but interestingly the spread is only -3 to Utah in this game, same as it was the first go-round.
Oklahoma State-Baylor I canāt speak on, because Iāve only seen Oklahoma State play, and that was last weekend in Bedlam so Iām biased, because any time you see a team win like that you start to root for them. So Iāll abstain from picking this game. I have no idea how Baylor looks, but Elo does and they give them a 40% chance to win, about 5% more than Vegas does. Thatās value.
Pitt-Wake Forest. Iāve seen both these teams play, and it seems like a toss-up to me. Which Pitt shows up? Which Wake shows up? Elo agrees: toss-up. Remember, no home-field advantage this week in any of these games.
And then thereās Michigan. Again, Iām biased. But, both these teams beat Penn State in different and equally infuriating ways. Michigan looks great. But again, is Iowa going to get pushed around in a conference championship game? I donāt think so. Maybe the spread in this one is the way to go, but Iowa is quite undervalued. I forgot about them and ruled them out, and they took care of their business and got to the championship game. Theyāre not gonna roll over now.
Win Probabilities
Thatās all for this weekend. Next week weāll probably talk Heisman. Enjoy the games and talk soon, and thanks for riding along with me all season, writing in with your thoughts and questions, and sharing with a few friends. Itās been a pleasure. But we still have some games to play!
ā Kyle