How Important Are Bowls to Projecting the Future?
by Year2 on Feb 23, 2010 3:13 PM EST
7 comments
Human predictions follow a reliable formula: What's Going To Happen Next ≈ What Just Happened.
That is how Dr. Matt "Saturday" Hinton started his post yesterday on the odds that one particular betting website is giving on next year's national champion. All five BCS winners made the top 12, and they went three-for-three at the top: Alabama (7-2), Ohio State (13-2), and Boise State (12-1).
Now, I'm not here to tell you in February that these odds are either sane or insane. It's too early for either of those judgments. However, I can tell you that simply looking at the big bowl winners is not necessarily a good plan for picking a champion. Here's all the champs of the BCS era (including the '03 AP champs) and how they fared in their bowl games the previous season:
| SEASON | CHAMPION | PREVIOUS BOWL |
| 2009 | Alabama | L vs Utah, 31-17 |
| 2008 | Florida | L vs Michigan, 41-35 |
| 2007 | LSU | W vs ND, 41-14 |
| 2006 | Florida | W vs Iowa, 31-24 |
| 2005 | Texas | W vs Michigan, 38-37 |
| 2004 | USC | W vs Michigan, 28-14 |
| 2003 | LSU | L to Texas, 35-20 |
| 2003 | USC | W vs Iowa, 38-17 |
| 2002 | Ohio St. | L to S. Carolina, 31-28 |
| 2001 | Miami (FL) | W vs Florida, 37-20 |
| 2000 | Oklahoma | L to Ole Miss, 27-25 |
| 1999 | Florida St. | L to Tennessee, 23-16 |
| 1998 | Tennessee | L to Nebraska, 42-17 |
Of the 13 teams listed, only six actually won their bowl game the previous season. Tennessee and Florida State lost to the national champions of the prior year, so that's understandable I guess. However, this should temper some of the momentum behind Alabama and Ohio State for 2010; after all, only four champions of the BCS era won their bowl by double digits the prior season. That's nearly equal to the three teams that lost their bowls by double digits the previous year.
If you want to read into things beyond reason, there are some patterns. Each champ from 1999-2002 played a bowl game against an SEC team the prior year. From 2003-08 each BCS champ but '03 LSU played a Big Ten team or Notre Dame in its bowl the previous year, and Michigan appeared three times and Iowa twice. That's not terribly useful, but it's interesting.
Seeing how bowl victories and losses correspond to winning in the next year is a much bigger study, but I'd imagine any correlation would be fairly weak. I love watching bowls as much as anyone does, but just keep in mind that they don't have much predictive power in relation to picking a champion.
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I'm pretty sure it's "Matt 'Dr. Saturday' Hinton," not "Dr. Matt 'Saturday' Hinton"
He’s not a real doctor. He just plays one on the internet.
Go 'Dawgs!
Good analysis
Anything can happen in any given season, and it will be interesting to see how Bama performs with the target squarely on their back in 2010. I give the Tide all the credit in the world for taking down the reigning champs (and presumptive 2009 favorites) to win the MNC, but nothing is a given, oddsmakers’ odds be damned.
Just my personal 2 cents, but I hope UF pulls an ’09 Bama and takes down the favorites (twice, we play in the regular season and I hope again in the SECCG) and wins it all. GO GATORS!
There's a pretty obvious reason that a lot of the recent champs had played Big 10 teams
A lot of the recent champs include the SEC or Southern Cal. Southern Cal has been in the Rose Bowl, and those SEC teams have a crapload of bowl ties with the Big T[elev]en.
by Incipient_Senescence on Feb 24, 2010 9:31 AM EST reply actions
Texas isn't in the Big Ten... (yet)
LSU, the BCS champion in 2003, lost to Texas the previous year. Texas is neither a Big Ten team nor Notre Dame.
Otherwise, I agree with your assessment. We can try to read into this data all we want with patterns and what not, but any patterns gleaned from that (small) data set gives us no useful info in predicting the next champion. And if the next champion happens to fall into that pattern, it won’t be because of said pattern; rather, it will be because they were the best team that year.
for the mid tier teams the bowls are usually a springboard for a better season next year.
utah has won nine straight bowl games and they beat cal by 10 points in poinsettia bowl(cals’ last td was a scrub td) utah is loaded on offense and they just got the news that matt asiata has been given a 6th year of eligibility. that means utah can go 4 deep at rb. it also depends on if your qb has had ncaa experience. utah opens up the season with a pitt team at home that is ranked in the pre preseason rankings at 14. pitt has to break in a new qb. i think utah will win by at least 10 points. we also have iowa state and notre dame on the schedule. tcu will be the toughest team to beat and wyoming and airforce who both won bowl games will be alot better next year. who was the last team to win the ncg or national title who had a qb that started the year as a freshman or redshirt freshman or even a sophmore who has no experience?
I'm all about covering the spread and moneylines. I was building a house, I don't deserve this, deserves have nothing to do with it. Bang. "Unforgiven" I drink your milkshake. I drink it up! "There Will BE Blood"
by wolfmanshowlforever on Feb 28, 2010 9:33 PM EST up reply actions
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