For the second year in a row I participated in an
against-the-spread contest with some high school friends for the college bowl
season. For the second year in a row I didn’t win (15/16 this year, 4/25 last
year).
I did, however, get some good anecdotes:
Familiarity
This group of people mainly from Columbus, Ohio and mainly
living in the Midwest still has a bit of a Big Ten problem. Last year the group
was 15% more confident in games involving Big Ten teams than games not
involving them while underperforming against the spread – the ATS win
percentage was 47.2% for these games and 48.2% for non-Big Ten games.
This year the group was 17% more confident when a Big Ten
team was involved while managing to win 48.8% of them. The win percentage on
non-Big Ten games was 53.4%.
Confidence
Last year the group was overconfident in what turned into
losses, betting 21.0 points against 19.5 on games they ended up picking
correctly. This year was flipped with the wins worth 21.6 while losses were
20.6.
As is evident in the chart below, however, there was no
correlation between confidence and success.
Confidence (pt. 2)
The game with the highest confidence was (inexplicably) the
Outback Bowl between Northwestern and Tennessee featuring 13 out of 16 people
picking the wrong team and an average confidence of 30.4. The least confident
game was San Jose State vs. Georgia State with 9 of 16 teams picking correctly
at an average confidence of 8.9.
Confidence (pt. 3)
After assigning the national championship game the lowest
aggregate wager last year (8.8 out of 39), this year people were feeling a bit
more lucky and gave it a higher risk than 8 other bowls (16.4 out of 41)
despite not knowing which two teams would be contesting the game.
14 of 16 got the Orange Bowl right while only 2 of 16 got
the Cotton Bowl correct (Big Ten) with 11 of the 16 ending up with a viable
championship game pick (5 Clemson, 6 Alabama). The Alabama picks were worth
19.8 – above the 14.3 for losers – so maybe those people were on to something.