Final Week One Picks

There will be two college games remaining after Saturday ends and the Aggregate has the break down for both. 

The Aggregate is predicting a 45-42 victory for LSU over USC. The Tigers look just a smidgen better to the Aggregate algorithm with a 55% chance to win. In the matchup on Labor Day the Aggregate still likes Florida State to prevail, but after the Georgia Tech game, the algorithm is now giving Boston College an 18 % chance.

Special Free Trial for Amazon Prime for Young Adults

 

Sunday, September 1st and Monday, September 2nd
Teams	Record	Score Prediction	Chance to Win	Vegas Line	O/U	Moneyline
Southern California	0-0	42	44.4%
Louisiana State	0-0	45	55.6%	-6	62.5	-$185.00
Boston College	0-0	31	16.7%
Florida State	0-1	40	83.3%	-21.5	51.5	-$800.00

Week 0 Betting Summary

We were super excited here at the Aggregate to get our first official bets ever in for the start of the football season, but week 0 was a big disappointment here at the Aggregate. The Aggregate went 2-2 for the weekend and we lost 1 percent of our bankroll losing both bets we placed. 

The reason that the Aggregate failed this week was Florida State. The Seminoles deeply saddened us this week with a poor performance against Georgia Tech although Tech looked good especially that defense. The Aggregate uses three different off-season ratings or evaluation tools to try and give us a range of how good a team might be coming into the next season. That information told us that Florida State was a 100% lock in winning Saturday's first game, but clearly that was wrong. It will be back to the drawing board for our preseason evaluations although we're still reserving some judgement till after week one. In fairness we did warn that early season calculations are notoriously unreliable because of the lack of data about each team. This proved too true so we hope you didn't bet your bank roll on our week 0 picks.

We will say this despite going 2-2 we were pretty proud of our data about New Mexico. The Lobos didn't win their game against Montana State, but they came very close and our data indicated it would be a closer contest than people expected. The same thing happened with the Hawaii game although in that case the Aggregate picked the Rainbow Warriors to get the victory in both our score prediction and chance to win category. Unfortunately the data indicates not that Delaware State is improved, but more that Hawaii is not very good.

The other area the Aggregate struggled at this week was the SMU game. Like many experts we saw SMU as a heavy favorite against the Nevada Wolf Pack, but the Mustangs just barely pulled out a win.

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Official stats from the week:

The Aggregate:

Moneyline: 2-2 (2 bets, lost 1% of our bankroll for the season)

Against The Spread: 2-2

Over/Under: 2-2

Other Entities Moneyline:

Vegas Line: 3-1

ESPN FPI: 2-2

Sagarin: 3-1

Week 0 Aggregate CFB Picks

 

College football is finally back and the Aggregate has predicted the first four games. Some special notes out here before you begin using the Aggregate predictor as a betting guide. 

One, the aggregate was effective last year and correctly selected almost 79% of winners during the regular season college football games. That sample size was about 170 games. This is likely too small a sample size to prove the aggregates ability. Personally I do believe in the data and am wagering this year based on that research, but you should know the wagers are very small. With the development of more automation in my process I should have a much larger sample size to work with after this season. However, whatever advice we may give is all at your own discretion. Your decisions are you own. I do promise to be honest about the Aggregates winning and losing and all of the data so that you can see what is working and what is not. 

Amazon Prime Free Trial

Two, the Aggregate was unable to accurately predict against the spread or over/under last year. Officially the Aggregate was 12 games under .500 against the spread and 3 games under against the over/under. Both of these percentages would only have lost money last year and I do not plan on betting any money on these categories although we will still list that information. I have made some small changes where those formulas are concerned including now factoring standard deviation to those calculations and am hopeful to get better results this season. I will continue to track how the formula does.

Three, the Aggregate betting system will work this way. Because of my extremely small bank roll I will be betting on approximately 14 games a week with the exception of Week 0 and 1 which will be a combined 14. For me these 14 games will be chosen by whichever teams have the best chance to win. The goal is to win as many as possible and if we are winning 79 percent than we will be making money. The actual percentage should be much higher as the 79 percent was based on all games even games where the favorite my only be favored by a percent or two. 

Four, other than the 14 moneyline bets I will place one bet per week on a parlay. Parlay's are notoriously tricky, but are very lucrative. This parlay will always just include moneyline bets as that's the category where the Aggregate has done so well in. The method behind picking those games will be simple. Any game where the Aggregate see's a 90% chance for a team to win or better will be included in the parlay for that week. The reason behind this is because last spring when the Aggregate broke down the NCAA basketball tournament it never failed to correctly predict a winner when the chance to win was 90% or higher. This is also a very small sample size and not one specifically from college football. I do not have the data for this for college football last year as I wasn't tracking it yet, but we'll have more data on this after this year. You should know that in the NCAA tournament only 9 games out of 65 met this criteria so the likelihood of many games with this are small. If for some reason there are not multiple games that meet this criteria than we will not place a parlay bet. 

Five, although we will be betting the same amount each week it would be smart to only bet small amounts early on. The reason for this is simple. At the beginning of the season we don't have very much data. The Aggregates preseason projections are based off of last year's teams rating, players lost and gained, and coaches lost and gained. This is our first year coming up with a preseason rating so it is very new and has no proven data. Because of this I weighed also Phil Steele's best power rating into the calculation so as to mitigate any outliers. As we gain more data about this I will move away from this. As we move further into the season though teams will show us who is best and who we can trust based on their results. This is the surest way to feel confident in betting with the Aggregate.

So now that you have been forewarned here is the Aggregate's Week 0 predictions:

 

Week Zero CFB Predictions
Teams	Record	Score Prediction	Chance to Win	Vegas Line	O/U	Moneyline
Saturday, August 24th
#10 Florida State	0-0	38	100.0%	-10.5	55.5	-$450.00
Georgia Tech	0-0	24	0.0%			$360.00
Montana State	0-0	46	33.0%	-13.5	54.5	-$550.00
New Mexico	0-0	44	66.7%			$425.00
SMU	0-0	42	100.0%	-27.0	55.5	-$3,500.00
Nevada	0-0	13	0.0%			$1,500.00
Sunday, August 25th
Deleware State	0-0	21	0.00%			N/A
Hawaii	0-0	35	100.00%	-40.5	55.5	N/A

The aggregate really likes three games. Florida State over Georgia Tech, SMU over Nevada, and Hawaii over Delaware State. In each of these cases the Aggregate sees the favorite as having a 100% chance to win. It is very early so that data can be unreliable, but the Aggregate is using three different preseason evaluation tools to get those results. The Aggregate is betting on one of those games. It is just the Florida State game. That games odds are the best this week and we are anticipating about a 19% ROI. All of our data points to their victory.  The Aggregate would have bet the SMU game, but the ROI basically came out to 0% for the level of investment that we are inputting. We would also have bet on the Hawaii game, but there is no moneyline available for that game. The Aggregate did invest in a 2 pick parlay with Florida State and SMU moneyline picks. We are anticipating a 23%ROI for this bet. 

FSU T-Shirts on Amazon

The one game that the Aggregate did not touch is the Montana State, New Mexico game. There are many reasons for this. First, our point calculator, which is a mean based predictor, predicted that Montana State would win the game while our Chance to win calculator, which is a median based predictor, holds that New Mexico will win the game. Second, as we said before this data is pretty small and we are unsure of it's ability to accurately predict anything yet. A couple of our models really like New Mexico's coaching hires and that has given them an edge that they may not actually have especially considering it's their first game. Third, we do not have a good system yet for evaluating FCS schools. Although we have made strides to correct this we still are not able to track all FCS schools and their results and as a result their ratings are based off of an  amalgamation of indicators, but not their actual results or off season moves. 

Adjusted Winning Percentage for ACC Coaches

I've often felt that winning percentage is not a great look at how good coaches actually perform as it does not factor in a multitude of items including environment, player talent and competition. As a result I devised a formula to try and tackle some of that problem and give a more accurate portrayal of what part of the wins and losses the head coach was responsible for. 

This metric, the adjusted win percentage for FBS coaches, tries to take into account at least the players that each coach is responsible for. For example when a new head coach wins in their very first year the credit only lies somewhat with them. Many of the players they are winning with were recruited by the previous staff. Often these coaches go on to not be successful in the long term. The best examples I can think of are Ed Orgeron at LSU or Gene Chizik at Auburn. Both should be noted actually had their best year a few years in, but neither lasted after a prolonged time. On the flip side new coaches often lose heavily in their first year because it takes time to recruit and install new systems and to get a full buy-in from players. Think Sabin's first year at Alabama or Bobby Petrino's first at Arkansas.

The basic thrust of the formula is this, the longer a coach has coached a team the more accountable he is for their wins and losses. The transfer portal has changed some of this in that the formula now holds coaches more accountable sooner. Gone are the days when you had four years to show some results.

Special notes, these statistics are based on fbs wins and losses only. The time period for the coaches is endless so all the coaches years are included, but it is only an evaluation of current coaches not coaches from the past.

In the ACC no one has a higher adjusted winning percentage than Dabo Swinney at Clemson. No surprise, Swinney has helmed one of the best college football programs of this century and it shows in his win percentage. Many consider the last few years at Clemson to be down years because of Swinney's unwillingness to embrace the transfer portal, but he still has 80.6% winning rate since the portal began. Time will tell if the Tigers are going to regress, but the Aggregate has them as the 11th best team in the country this year.

Possibly the most interesting aspect of the metric for the ACC was which coaches seem to have been helped by rosters that they did not create. Dave Doeren at NC State, Bill O'Brien at Boston College, Pat Narduzzi at Pitt, Justin Wilcox at Cal and Tony Elliot at Virginia all have a better traditional winning percentage than adjusted, but no one has a bigger difference than Jeff Brohm at Louisville at -1.5% worse. This shows these coaches have had more success early in their time at programs which at least implies that these coaches have come into favorable situations early in their coaching and their traditional win percentages are at least a little inflated. 

Here are the full results:   

ACC Coaches	Team	W	L	Adjusted W Pct	Traditional W Pct	Difference
Fran Brown	Syracuse	0.0	0.0	#DIV/0!	0.0%	#DIV/0!
Dabo Swinney	Clemson	154.3	32.1	82.8%	79.8%	3.0%
Rhett Lashlee	SMU	14.5	6.0	70.7%	66.7%	4.0%
Mike Norvell	Florida State	54.5	23.3	70.1%	67.6%	2.5%
Mack Brown	UNC	252.0	109.5	69.7%	65.7%	4.0%
Dave Doeren	NC State	81.3	48.5	62.6%	62.7%	-0.1%
Manny Diaz	Duke	18.5	11.5	61.7%	58.3%	3.4%
Bill O'Brien	Boston College	5.5	3.5	61.1%	62.5%	-1.4%
Jeff Brohm	Louisville	48.3	32.5	59.8%	61.3%	-1.5%
Pat Narduzzi	Pittsburgh	53.8	42.0	56.1%	56.5%	-0.4%
Dave Clawson	Wake Forest	82.0	69.0	54.3%	50.5%	3.8%
Mario Cristobal	Miami	57.8	51.1	53.0%	50.3%	2.7%
Brent Key	GT	9.0	8.0	52.9%	52.4%	0.5%
Brent Pry	Va Tech	8.5	10.0	45.9%	41.7%	4.2%
Justin Wilcox	California	28.8	34.8	45.3%	45.6%	-0.3%
Tony Elliott	Virginia	4.5	12.5	26.5%	27.3%	-0.8%
Troy Taylor	Stanford	1.5	4.5	25.0%	25.0%	0.0%

Interested in Amazon Prime? Get a discount here:

Looking for ACC shirts before the season? Amazon's got what you need:

ACC End of Year Rankings

The end of year rankings for the ACC. Both Miami and Duke move up one while North Carolina drops two. North Carolina dropped after a 20 point loss to West Virginia in the Duke's Mayo Bowl. Miami rose one despite a 7 point loss to Rutgers in the Pinstripe bowl. Duke moved up one after a 7 point win over Troy in the Birmingham Bowl. Syracuse also fell two spots after a horrid showing against USF. The Orange lost by 45 points to the Bulls. This allowed Pitt who didn't play in a bowl game and Boston College who beat SMU to move up. 

 

Final Aggregate Top 25 and 1 Rankings

Final Aggregate rankings for the 2023 college football season. Biggest movers: Notre Dame up 5 after a big win against a depleted Oregon State team and SMU down 4 after losing with their 3rd string quarterback against Boston College. Comeback tomorrow for each conference breakdown. 

 

Aggregate Predictions for December 30th

 The Aggregate predictions for the Chic-Fil-A Peach Bowl, the TransPerfect Music City Bowl, the Capital One Orange Bowl and the Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. The Aggregate likes all the favorites except for one. The algorithm is betting against Vegas in the Arizona Bowl taking 11-2 Toledo over 8-4 Wyoming. The algorithm likes the Rockets by one point and in it's median prediction actually does like Wyoming. Other big differences: The Aggregate likes Georgia by just three against Florida State instead of the 14 Vegas is giving in the game. It's important to point out that the Aggregate does not consider player or coach departures. It also likes Penn State by 13. The Vegas line is only four in their game against Ole Miss.