In the final chapter of the handicapping tutorial, I am going to take you through the finalizing of the adjusted score and other factors that I look at to come up with a play. In the world we live in today, information is power, and the more of it you have, typically the better. The key is figuring out what matters. Before we get into the final chapter, a quick review of what we’ve covered thus far.

Part 1:

In Part 1 of the series, I provided all of the tools that I use most frequently in capping a college football game. As you create your model, or do any work in excel really, there are many of different shortcuts to make things faster. If you say to yourself, “there must be an easier way to do this,”…I can guarantee you there is.

Part 2:

In Part 2 of the series, I provided some detail of the different sources I use before the season, during the season, and after the season. Part of handicapping is filtering through the smoke and finding what is important, and what isn’t, while always remembering, there is never going to be much that completely deviates the outcome.

Part 3:

In Part 3, we finally got into the team vs team handicapping. I broke down how a football game is a sum of its parts, and how we can analyze those different parts to create an output.

Part 4:

In Part 4, we took the Team vs Team output and took it to the next level, incorporating turnovers and field goals.

Part 5:

Part 5 covers the adjustment of the projected score, and how correlation plays a part.

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Finalizing the Projection

We’ve looked at the correlation numbers and analyzed what matters, and adjusted accordingly. As we covered this in the last section, I will continue to use the Alabama vs Ole Miss game as our example. What else matters?

Coaching. Coaching in college makes a big difference in a team. I have built a coaching matrix that analyze coaches. What stats do coaches have a direct influence with?

3rd down conversions, penalties, Red Zone %, Turnovers are just a few. How does a coach perform in these categories? How does a teams opponents perform?

This is just additional info to have to help us adjust the score a little bit more.

What else matters?

Information. As much as the stats can tell us, the most important part of handicapping is the information we have. The stats give us a place to start, but the research and information you find is key.

Is a team pissed off and looking for a statement win? Is it an emotional senior meet? Has the team given up and going out on Wednesday nights? All of these things matter.

Before I finalize a play, there are a few things that I always do and things I look for:

Injury news, Motivation, Playbook Changes

How do I find this information?

Google.

I google each team, the match-up, anything. I read mid week practice reports that I find on google. A lot of times this will tell us things about injuries that may or may not be priced into the early week lines. In the information age we are in today, we need to look for any edge we can find.

Twitter.

Twitter is amazing. I’ve said it many times before, and I will continue to say it. You can get insight into players. You can get up to the second updates from those that are closest to the team. For example, here I have a list created for every beat writer in the SEC.  Many times, beat writers have the most information on teams and sit

Things like this help save us time. After we get the projected score, I typically spend 15-30 minutes on games where I like the score just doing research. Most of the time I find something that will cause me not to play a game because of an unknown. Is the QB banged up and possibly not going to play?

The Conclusion

College Football is a relatively pure version of football. The reason I prefer college football vs NFL is because of the size of the market. My recommendation to beginning handicappers is to find a team, or a conference and become a specialist in just that niche. Because of the size of the market, it is nearly impossible to stay up to date on every single team. Vegas usually knows more than us, so keep that in mind.

The most important advice I can give to anyone is to adjust. Every week we get new data, we see new things, and we can learn. If you don’t continue to adjust, then you will lose. Vegas, or the market will adjust to price in new information, so you should as well.

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