Betting on Teams with Extra Time to Prepare
Betting on Teams with Extra Time to Prepare
One of the things I hear quite a bit during the season is that a certain team benefits from having extra time to prepare. You’ll hear things like, “Oh man, Alabama is off a bye this week. Nick Saban with more time to prepare for an opponent? Lay the points!”
Sounds like good logic. Saban and Alabama have been incredibly successful in recent memory. What bothers me is a lot of people give you subjective analysis without providing the all-important backup to support it.
So what do the numbers say?
Over the past 5 seasons, Saban has been impressive with extra time to prepare going 13-5 ATS. That puts him 9th best among coaches in the Big 5 conferences (B1G, Big 12, SEC, ACC & PAC 12) over that time period. If you include his entire head coaching career, Saban comes in at 33-30 ATS with extra time to prepare. For the math challenged, that puts you at break even assuming -110 juice.
With an economics/mathematics background, I always like to look at the big picture and see if I can draw any conclusions that can help in handicapping. I’m curious to see if the supposed best head coaches do in fact do well with extra time to prepare.
I have an exhaustive college football database I’ve constructed by using cfbstats.com and covers.com that allows me to test theories and pull stats on almost anything imaginable. So for those curious where I’m pulling my numbers from, there’s your answer.
The 64 head coaches from the 5 power conferences have the following stats:
ATS combined record: 3320-2793 (54.31%)
ATS combined record with less time to prepare: 136-106 (56.20%)
ATS combined record with standard time to prepare: 2171-1852 (53.96%)
ATS combined record with extra time to prepare: 1013-835 (54.82%)
What’s interesting is that as a group, these coaches have done better with little time to prepare as opposed to having extra time to prepare. It’s a small sample size but still interesting. They also seem to do a little better when having extra time to prepare compared to the normal week of preparation.
In my next post, I’ll continue to delve into the topic and provide some lists with how well individual coaches do with extra time to prepare.
8 thoughts on “Betting on Teams with Extra Time to Prepare”
Leave a Reply
MAXIMIZE YOUR EDGE
I think the bigger factor may be, “how do the players use the extra time to prepare?” Obviously, we do not know what goes on behind closed doors, but we need to understand that coaches sometimes take it easier on the players in their offweek to allow them to get caught up and concentrate on studies. I’d be interested in hearing from an ex-player for one of the BCS conferences to see how “concentrated” they are on the upcoming game during their time off. I think they might be a little more concentrated on HAVING time off and what they can do with it.
Good point BS. Plus that time off may lead to some extra time for curricular activities that could get them into trouble too.
Saban has had the most talented team in the country for the past 5 years. He’s going to have a decent record whether he gets a week or a month to prepare for a game. He’s always going to come into a game well prepared. But as much as he may try, he hasn’t been able to do much about the attitude of his teams. Whenever Bama has finished with a somewhat disappointing season, they have lost their BCS bowl games as big favorites against both Utah and Oklahoma.
One thing I really like Saban for is he always has his teams ready for the first game of the season against their non conference opponents. I like those kinds of games better when we know that his players are always going to come into the new season well prepared with a fresh enthusiastic attitude. And much more talent than their opponent.
You also have to be a little of careful with these kinds of trends. Not all games are created equal. Sometimes one coach gets a bye week, and the other one doesn’t. So you just have to take these games on an individual basis. Take Paul Johnson for example. He probably doesn’t have a very good win record when their opponents have had two weeks or more to prepare for GT’s triple option offense. Even if Johnson’s team also got a bye week. I wish I could remember that coach I used to bet against after every bye week. He couldn’t win to save his ass. On the other end, Fridgen from Maryland was almost always money to win his bowl games.
I checked my database and Paul Johnson is 13-18 ATS against FBS opponents who had extra time to prepare for his triple option. Also, Saban is 10-6 ATS in season openers. I don’t like “probably” statements so more than happy to back up your statements, especially since they were accurate. Thanks for adding.
Josh, with Saban I was referring more to Bama than I was his other teams LSU and Michigan State. Neither of those teams had quite the talent as this Bama team has had for the past 5 years. I haven’t looked back any further, but Saban is 5-0 ATS in his openers the last 5 years. Bama wasn’t very good in Saban’s first season. But they’ve done pretty well since then against for the most part some pretty solid opponents. Three of those 5 teams were top 10 teams. So he’s definitely got his mojo working in that first game. At least with Bama he does.
Agreed. And to think, Colorado almost came back and beat Alabama in a bowl game not too long ago…[weeps].