running teams and bowl games - 14-5-1 ATS so far?

[rivercitybirdie]

this general idea was put forth in another thread by sooner poster (sorry, can't remember exact moniker)

i think the idea was to bet on teams with more rushing yards, maybe that were underdogs...

anyway, i did this quickly and made it simple..... basically back the team with more rushing attempts per game. so if WSU played texas tech, one of them would be a "rushing team pick" for that game.

i have this system at 14-5-1 for this bowl season so far (post games today).......

4 comments:

1) i probably wouldn't play this against "passing system" teams, like the top 10 passing (% of plays teams in country)... 3 of the 5 ats losses were against big passing teams (not top 10, although 2 were) and i that i think of as passing team but statistically wasn't this year.

2) for me the idea is that run games translate better to the distraction and less precision of bowl games.... also, teams with rushing systems (and passing systems) must be a nightmare for bowl teams to prepare for vs. the regular season... to be clear though the system is picking a 36 rush attempt team over a 35 rush attempt team.

3) i did some checking on games and it seems like relative rushing yard totals in game are good ATS indicator even when rushing yards are completely dwarfed by passing yards (both teams have way more passing than rushing yards).... i will say that this looked great when i did a bunch of bowls and not as good later when i graded other games, so not totally sure.

4) very technically nitty point: i am using RPA from statsfox.com today. so may incorporate bowl game into some averages. should make very little difference.

i am going to look at rush and pass highly skewed teams. i think they'd both be good bets.

 

[IGotThisTT]

Interesting. Keep us posted with your progress.

 

[rivercitybirdie]

TT, thanks for the interest....

FWIW, top 5 run or pass heavy teams are 4-0 ATS so far...... still to play running are AF, GT. still to play passing are: cal, tt.... AF and cal play each other... i assume army and illinois aren't in bowls.... will double check all this later.

i'm doing this analysis on the run so any errors people see, please advise......

ATS winners are wash, tulsa??, neb, wm, sdsu, boise, gaso, akr, toledo. navy, minn utah, nm, sjsu (thought they were passing team but things change)

ATS losers are these games: wsu, sf, ark state, app st, conn (can't remember it was backing conn or marshall but it was ATS loss)

i see illinois and rice lost the "RPI" comparison of 5-7 teams. so nebraska, minnesota, sjsu got into bowl games instead.

 

[rivercitybirdie]

GT's 2nd longest in country bowling streak came to an end....

gonna double-check a couple of games, appstate-ohio esp....

 

[rivercitybirdie]

i neglected to mention the "running dogs" thread too.... not totally sure but its record looks pretty good so far too.

the system i put the record for makes every game a play i.e. one team is the "running team" every game.

 

[rivercitybirdie]

So AF is a loss, but played a really heavy pass team as noted...

I think I want to back hardcore running and passing teams against mixed offense teams.... Will do some backtest. Maybe top 10 of both (% of plays for each)

 

[richporter]

does nevada qualify ?

 

[rivercitybirdie]

does nevada qualify ?

sorry, i'm late...... LSU/Baylor/Nevada all plays by this system.. i am not playing it for $$$$ so i am a bit slow to post the picks (it's purely a formula so posting picks afterwards shouldn't matter)

i use statfox.com team stats and strictly number of rushing attempts per game.....

i am trying to fine-tune it in another thread..... definitely conceptually prefer %running plays (maybe also play very highly skewed passing % teams) over rushing attempts per game.