Adam Burke shares his weekly college football power ratings
The college football picture seems to be getting a little clearer. There are still going to be a number of shocking results, but the degree of confidence that we have in our reads on teams and our models/ratings systems should be going up. Weekly outliers are inevitable, but patterns are emerging and that was my big takeaway as I put together my Week 8 Power Ratings and game spreads.
This is the first week where I don’t have a fairly significant number of overlays. A lot of my numbers wound up being close to the market numbers. On one hand, that is a great thing. It means that my ratings system is getting more efficient. On the other hand, it means that my perceived edges may be getting smaller and the range between my number and the market number is shrinking in terms of deciding what to bet on.
To put it into different terms, say my threshold for making a bet was an overlay of 4+ points. It might be 2-3 points now. I’m sure I’ll still have a handful of differences that fit that criteria, especially if injury information slipped past me or if there’s a team I’m particularly high on or low on. But, it would imply that everything is tightening up and teams are more projectable in nature.
That makes sense. We only have 12 regular season data points for almost every team, so having six or seven at this point will have to do because what we see is what we’re likely going to get.
I do still believe that we’ll see wild swings and inconsistency (we can call it “parity”) from the teams in the middle. We still have some marquee matchups left for the rest of the season as well that are going to be really interesting, but I think the goal the rest of the way for me will be to look for my perceived edges with teams that have shown a wide range of outcomes. Volatility is usually a bettor’s best friend, so if you can isolate the good or the bad games from teams that have had a good helping of each, I think that’s where the markets will be slightly less efficient.
Here are my Week 8 College Football Power Ratings:
