Modelling College Football and Rankings After Week 2

Along with the NFL and the CFL, I am also modelling the American college football (CFB?)(NCAAF?) FBS (or division 1-a) championship this year. Just like the other two leagues, I know pretty much nothing about this championship and it is far more confusing to me than the NFL and the CFL due to the number of teams. My model now contains all of the games back to 2000 and there have been about 245 teams that have played in it over that time period.

It is also an administrative nightmare to keep on top of the vast number of games. Big shouts out to FBSchedules and Sports-Reference for their fantastic resources for this. ESPN are also pretty good for scores updates, as you might expect.

The college model is much more volatile than the NFL one, in that teams gain and lose far more ground with a victory. Home advantage also appears to be much stronger in college football than the professional leagues. However, there have been a touch over 14,300 games since the year 2000 and my model can correctly predict the outcome 74% of the time (compared to 64% for the NFL). So far this year it is sitting at 77% correct over 166 games.

Unlike the NFL and CFL, I am not placing bets on the NCAAF this year. I am tracking the odds and simulating what bets I would place, but the betting aspects of my model is not mature enough for this championship yet for me to be ready to actually risk money. My 52 fake bets so far have made an ROI of 5% though. For comparison, I probably will not even be making 52 total bets on the NFL this year and will be totaling far less than that on the CFL (only 6 from 50 games so far).

I have the top 25 FBS college football teams as we head into week 3 as:

1. Alabama
2. Clemson
3. OhioState
4. Georgia
5. Oklahoma
6. Wisconsin
7. PennState
8. Auburn
9. LouisianaState
10. SouthernCalifornia
11. Stanford
12. NotreDame
13. TexasChristian
14. OklahomaState
15. MississippiState
16. CentralFlorida
17. VirginiaTech
18. Washington
19. BoiseState
20. NorthCarolinaState
21. WashingtonState
22. Miami(FL)
23. Northwestern
24. MichiganState
25. Iowa