2011 College Football Preseason Projections Review: Our Conference And Division Futures Picks Would Have Tripled Your Bankroll

December 15, 2011 - by David Hess

Before we get to Saturday and the start of the college football bowls, we thought it would be a valuable exercise to review how our 2011 college football preseason projections performed. This season was the first time we’ve published data-driven preseason projections for college football.

While we did plenty of historical testing to try to confirm we were on the right track, there’s always some uncertainty when a new system is released into the wild for the first time. We released quite a lot of projected info for each team, but we’ll focus on team win totals and conference win odds for all FBS teams.

Conference and Division Win Odds

In each of our BCS conference previews (links to which can be found in our 2011 Big East preview), we used the preseason projections to pick one or two ‘Best Values’ — actual ‘Win Division’ or ‘Win Conference’ futures bets offered at leading sportsbooks that our projections suggested might be worth backing.

Boy, were they.

If you had bet one unit on all ten “Best Values” you’d have walked away with 19.3 units of profit at the end of the year, nearly tripling your money:

Conference	Team	To Win	Odds	Implied%	TR Pred%	Result	Net
Pac-12	Oregon	Division	5/4	44.0%	53.8%	WIN	+1.25
Big Ten	Iowa	Division	7/1	12.5%	20.6%	x	-1
Big 12	Oklahoma St	Conference	9/1	10.0%	16.9%	WIN	+9
Big Ten	Illinois	Division	10/1	9.1%	17.7%	x	-1
Pac-12	California	Division	10/1	9.1%	13.0%	x	-1
Big 12	Missouri	Conference	14/1	6.7%	17.0%	x	-1
ACC	Clemson	Conference	16/1	5.9%	13.0%	WIN	+16
Big East	Connecticut	Conference	22/1	4.3%	9.6%	x	-1
SEC	Kentucky	Division	25/1	3.8%	8.3%	x	-1
ACC	NC State	Conference	28/1	3.4%	9.9%	x	-1
Total				1.1 correct	1.8 correct	3 correct	+19.25

Most of the value we highlighted was in relative longshots, which meant we only needed one or two successes to make the portfolio profitable, and we got three. Here are the three correct picks, along with some snippets we wrote back in the preseason:

Oregon to win Pac-12 North Division (5/4) — We’re as surprised as you are. Rarely would you expect to find any value in betting one of the top ranked teams in the nation to repeat as division winners — defending division champs and highly ranked teams are usually both overpriced. Why not in this case?
Oklahoma State to win Bg 12 (9/1) – Vegas is very confident in the Sooners, to the point where other odds are undervalued. Oklahoma State by most measures is a borderline top 10 team, it makes sense that they have better than 10% odds of winning the conference.
Clemson to win ACC (16-1) — The market seems to have placed such a premium on Virginia Tech and Florida State that many of the other teams appear to be reasonably valued. We project Clemson as the third-best team in the conference, only around a point worse than Virginia Tech.

Of course, some of these look kind of silly in retrospect, as well:

Iowa to win Big Ten Legends Division (7/1) — With Nebraska so heavily overrated there a multiple teams with decent odds on this half of the conference. Iowa is the best of the bunch, though.

You win some and you lose some. Hey, as long as you win enough…

Team Win Totals

Across our various projections-related blog posts — mostly the conference previews and a Stat Geek Perspective post — we published 46 projected team win totals that were paired with win total over/unders from leading sportsbooks. (We published projected totals for all teams, we just didn’t find all teams listed at sportsbooks).

To make a long story short, our projections did very well, as our win total was on the correct side of the Vegas line around 65% of the time:

Conference	Team	Vegas	TR	Actual	Correct Side?
SEC	Alabama	10	9.8	11	no
Pac-12	Arizona	6.5	6.9	4	no
Pac-12	Arizona St	8	7.7	6	YES
SEC	Auburn	6.5	8.1	7	YES
Big 12	Baylor	6.5	4.6	9	no
MWC	Boise St	10	10.9	11	YES
ACC	Clemson	7	7.7	9	YES
Pac-12	Colorado	4	3.8	3	YES
SEC	Florida	10	8.3	6	YES
ACC	Florida St	10	9.1	8	YES
SEC	Georgia	8	7.5	10	no
ACC	Georgia Tech	6	7.2	8	YES
Big Ten	Iowa	8	7.8	7	YES
Big 12	Kansas St	5.5	5.7	10	YES
SEC	Kentucky	6	6.5	5	no
SEC	LSU	9.5	7.4	12	no
ACC	Miami FL	8	7.2	6	YES
Big Ten	Michigan	7	7.3	10	YES
Big Ten	Michigan St	7	7.4	10	YES
SEC	Mississippi St	7	7	6	no
Big 12	Missouri	7.5	8.7	7	no
Big Ten	Nebraska	10	9.1	9	YES
Big Ten	Northwestern	7.5	5.4	6	YES
Ind	Notre Dame	9	7.1	8	YES
Big Ten	Ohio State	9	9.3	6	no
Big 12	Oklahoma	10	9.6	9	YES
Big 12	Oklahoma St	8	8.5	11	YES
Pac-12	Oregon	9.5	10.6	10	YES
Pac-12	Oregon St	7	5.4	3	YES
Big Ten	Penn St	8	7.4	9	no
SEC	S Carolina	9	8.3	10	no
Big East	South Florida	8	7.3	5	YES
Pac-12	Stanford	8.5	9.4	11	YES
Big East	Syracuse	6	5.4	5	YES
MWC	TCU	9	10.5	10	YES
SEC	Tennessee	6.5	5.9	5	YES
Big 12	Texas	8.5	7.3	7	YES
Big 12	Texas A&M	8.5	8.2	6	YES
Big 12	Texas Tech	7	6.7	5	YES
Pac-12	UCLA	5.5	5.4	6	no
Pac-12	USC	7.6	7.7	10	YES
ACC	Virginia Tech	10	9.5	11	no
Pac-12	Wash St	4.5	2.8	4	YES
Pac-12	Washington	6	4.4	7	no
Big East	West Virginia	9	9.1	9	no
Big Ten	Wisconsin	9	8.7	10	no
Total					Yes 30-16 No

Now, many of those totals were presented with odds other than -110/-110, so it’s not as if we were dominating Vegas. But it was at minimum a respectable showing.

So, have we convinced you we know what we’re doing over here? If so, and you’re going to compete in a Bowl Pick’em or are planning on wagering on some of the games, make sure to check out our 2011-2012 college football bowl games section, complete with bowl predictions, bowl betting picks, and bowl pick’em advice and picks.