December 20th… it’s quickly approaching and with it: variation and change. NCAA football begins a new phase with a 12-team college football playoff. Typically, the holiday season is full of “bowl games” but this is year different. Check out the current NCAA College Football Playoff bracket.
We used to get to re-live favorites like:
- 1987 Fiesta Bowl: Penn State 14, Miami, Fla. 10 (what an upset!)
- 2000 Orange Bowl: Michigan 35, Alabama 34 (they doubted the GOAT then too)
- 2007 Fiesta Bowl: Boise State 43, Oklahoma 42 (the underdog won!)
- 2016 Alamo Bowl: TCU 47, Oregon 41 (3 Over Times)
National polls used to decide the NCAA football champion. Strangely they would often have teams share the title. Being co-champions didn’t often sit well. We had a Bowl Championship Series for a while, which was a system instituted in 1998 that produced a national championship matchup based on a combination of computer rankings. That was replaced with a 4-team college football playoff (2014–2023). It was an infuriating time for all but those lucky four schools who made it in. Every year a great team, your team maybe, dear reader, would be left out! This year we get 12 teams in, all with the chance to win the Natty!
Are the Odds Good?
“Chance”, “odds”, “probability.” Many normal people use these interchangeably, but not us. Minitab, which was started in the math department of Penn State around 50 years ago thinks of these words very differently! Let me help you think through one common sports betting phrase that is on my TV in some commercial practically every college football game: American Odds. Have you seen some wording like +400 or -125 describing who is supposed to win? Well, if you’d like to know how those relate to implied probability to win it goes something like this: if the odds are positive, apply this formula: 100/(odds + 100) . If the odds are negative, apply this formula: odds/(odds + 100)
- +400 American odds: 100/(400+100) = 0.20 probability to win
- -125 American odds: 125/(125+100) = 0.56 probability to win
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With only 4 teams in the CFP the odds were close… in 2023/24 the moneyline (which team would win the game) was Alabama (+110); Michigan (-130) in game 1 and in game 2 we had Washington (+155); Texas (-185)
- Best odds (-185) implied only a 0.65 probability to win
- Worst odds (+155) implies a 0.39 probability to win (39% is still purty high! And sure enough Washington did win that game as the “biggest underdog,” before losing the next Natty to Michigan)
- Why don't these implied probabilities add up to 100%? Well, this is in part how the bookmakers make their money. Higher implied probability means they pay out less… In most of the sets of American odds I’ve looked at it adds up to around 105%.
Underdogs win so often. If you’re on their side when they do, it’s such a great feeling! So what if we throw out statistics and think about tradeoffs instead? What would you pay for the change in a 12-team playoff for your team to win any round? How much would it be worth to win it all as the underdog?
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Sure, you could make an equation for this but why not just feel how you feel? The higher those odds the less likely you are to win, but you still could! Each of you readers would have to make the joy data for yourself anyways, this is just my tradeoff curve. Odds are a science but joy is not.
What Lies Ahead
We don’t know what the playoffs will bring. But I bet my favorite teams will have terrible odds against the higher seeded teams. I could foresee the odds looking nasty for a matchup of Boise State vs. Ohio State. And if Boise, my favorite memories of underdogs in college football… and how about their running back this year?!... What if they made it all the way to play Oregon? I bet you could get that +1000 (or even longer odds! Maybe a 10,000 ~= 1% chance to win!)
I wish you luck. Gambling involves risk. This blog in fact expects that if you bet on long odds you will lose, but what if they come through?
“He beat me... Straight up... Pay him... Pay that man his money.” – Teddy KGB to Matt Damon’s character in Rounders after their final bet. Wouldn’t you love your Ohio State friend to have to say that after your team upsets them?
“When you win, nothing hurts.” - Joe Namath
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