2023: Bowl Picks

My school has an intramural event for bowl picks that uses the ESPN site to organize bowl-selection competitions, which looks like part of their fantasy sports site.  In the site, you can pick a winner for each of the games, and then order how confident you are in each.  There are 43 games, so 43 slots for your confidence, each with the index of that slot for the points you earn if your pick is correct.

Well, I tried out a few options and got better results that what I had in my last post.  Then I used the ratings to figure out who I thought would win each game.  I then sorted that list by the difference in ratings.  A higher difference means I think that team is more likely to win, so I put those in the slots that yield more points.

Here is my list, from least points (1) to most points (43).  The team in all caps is the team I picked to win.  (If the chosen team name is already an acronym, then I put stars around it to be more clear.)

1. *UCF* v Georgia Tech 
   
2. Texas Tech v CALIFORNIA 
3. SAN JOSE ST v Coastal Carolina 
4. Utah St. v GEORGIA ST 
5. WYOMING v Toledo 
6. NOTRE DAME v Oregon St 
7. NORTHERN ILLINOIS v Arkansas St 
8. KANSAS ST v NC State 
9. LOUISIANA v Jacksonville St. 
10. Boise St. v *UCLA* 
11. OHIO U v GA Southern 
12. MARSHALL v UTSA 
13. WASHINGTON v Texas 
14. Florida A&M v HOWARD 
15. OKLAHOMA v Arizona 
16. Rice v TEXAS STATE 
17. APPALACHIAN ST. v Miami OH 
18. MINNESOTA v Bowling Green 
19. MARYLAND v Auburn 
20. OLD DOMINION v WKU 
21. *LSU* v Wisconsin 
22. FRESNO ST v New Mexico St. 
23. Tennessee v IOWA 
24. BOSTON COLLEGE v SMU 
25. National Championship Game:
    (Michigan v Alabama winner) v (WASHINGTON v TEXAS WINNER)
    
26. West Virginia v NORTH CAROLINA 
27. Northwestern v UTAH 
28. DUKE v Troy 
29. Tulane v VIRGINIA TECH 
30. MICHIGAN v Alabama 
31. Air Force v JAMES MADISON 
32. SYRACUSE v USF 
33. OKLAHOMA ST v Texas A&M 
34. PENN STATE v Ole Miss 
35. Eastern Michigan v SOUTH ALABAMA 
36. OHIO STATE v Mizzou 
37. MIAMI FL v Rutgers 
38. FLORIDA ST v Georgia 
39. LOUISVILLE v USC 
40. Kentucky v CLEMSON 
41. IOWA STATE v Memphis 
42. UNLV v KANSAS 
43. OREGON v Liberty

Technically I think I can change any of these up until close to the time of the game.  If I were really optimizing this, then I'd review after each game and see if there's any changes I should make.  I don't think I'll actually be putting that much effort into it, though!

Wish me luck!

2023: Week 14 (Conference Championships)

2023 is the last year of the four-team playoffs (and the PAC-12, sadly).  So, of course there was going to be a lot of drama picking the four teams that will go to the playoffs.  Conference Championships were yesterday.  The playoff committee made their picks known today:

1. Michigan (13-0, Big Ten champions)
2. Washington (13-0, PAC-12 champions)
3. Texas (12-1, Big-12 champions)
4. Alabama (12-1, SEC champions)
5. (Didn't make it) Florida State (13-0, ACC champions)
6. (Didn't make it) Georgia (12-1, lost to Alabama in the SEC championship game)

There's quite a bit of furor about putting Alabama over Florida State.  I won't get into all the controversy, though I disagreed that Michigan should be above Washington.  But, let's see what my (buggy) ranker says!  I stuck with the parameters from before: 35 max point differential and using the quarter-circle function.

Ranking Stats

Upsets: 722 of 4160 games (17.35576923076923%)
Margins of Victory in upsets: 7618 (8.853918480724305% of total margin points)

That is an improvement from last week!  Let's see how the top 25 shook out:

1. Washington
2. Florida St
3. Texas
4. Oregon
5. Michigan
6. Louisville
7. Ohio State
8. Oklahoma
9. Penn State
10. Notre Dame
11. Arizona
12. Alabama
13. North Carolina St
14. Oregon St
15. Georgia
16. Kansas St
17. Duke
18. Clemson
19. North Carolina
20. Oklahoma St
21. James Madison
22. Kutztown
23. Kansas
24. Miami FL
25. LSU

There's one obvious outlier in Kutztown, but otherwise I think this is pretty good.  I am looking forward to rerunning things from this season once I get this ranker working better!