The Book 2015: The Bowls

Welcome to Bowl Season, or as ESPN (the owner of virtually every bowl) would say, "the most wonderful time of the year".  As a kid, I loved bowl season.  Even though there were not nearly the sheer volume of games we have today, it was still a thrill to see teams you didn't get to see all the time on TV and in warm weather destinations and with exotic names, like the Astro Bluebonnet Bowl.

I started attending BC games in 1970.  In that year, only 11 bowl games existed.  Cotton, Orange, Rose, Sugar, Gator, Bluebonnet, Peach, Tangerine, Pasadena, Sun and Liberty.  It took until 1976 for the game list to grow to 12. By the time I graduated in 1985, the number was up to 18.  It took until 1997 to reach 20 games, til 2006 to go over 30 and now we have 37...with not enough eligible teams to go around!

Think about that, members of our top 25 (although in those days they only would rank the top 20), didn't go to bowl games.  Now we have teams ranked as low as #92 in our strength of record poll, San Jose St., getting bowl SWAG.

Brings us to the aforementioned Strength of Record rankings.  Last week, I gave you a brief look at the top 25 using strength of record as opposed to straight Book or Phil Steele rankings. This metric takes out margin of victory and focuses pretty exclusively on who you beat and who you lose to. The results, in many cases, are far different from what either magazine provides us and in most cases, are far more in line with the human polls and the college football playoff.

My thought next year is that I may use the Strength of Record to rank and the Book and/or Steele for point spreads..we will see how it goes.

You can work your way down the poll and see the variance between the metrics. Iowa for instance is ranked #7 in strength of record, but #19/22 in the magazine polls as they have struggled with margin of victory.  Washington on the other hand is #48 in strength of record, but #16/17 in the two pre-season mags.  Why? Losses will weigh you down when looking at strength of record.

The ACC rankings show BC at the bottom, with Georgia Tech and Wake Forest just above them.  So why is BC at the ass end of this?

In this case, it's a question of who they beat, more than who they lost to. BC's wins over Maine, Howard and Northern Illinois garnered very few ratings points. Georgia Tech did better, with wins over Alcorn State, Tulane (about the same quality as BC's) but also beating Florida State while Wake defeated Elon, Army but also BC.  With the losses being fairly even, you can see how BC could finish last.

Should BC have beaten Syracuse, they would have jumped all the way to #11...alas!

Take a look at the variances in each poll and you can also compare them to the Sagarin ratings which are also listed. Sagarin rather than Massey this week as there were no changes in the Massey aggregate poll.  See which you more agree with and then of course the point spreads for all the bowl games are listed at the bottom.

Bowl games by their very nature are hard to pick.  Vegas only picks just above 55% winners forget about against the spread.  Coaching changes, long layoff, which team actually wants to be there, etc as well as the fact that you have two generally evenly matched teams means this is hard for anyone to predict and our picks are no different.

Phil Steele's magazine, by our calculations at least, is poised to capture the 2015 title, holding a seven game lead over the Book heading into bowl season.  Both are looking to finish on the plus side of .500 for the year.

Enjoy your Bowl season and Go Eagles!