Best Bets: How To Win Your College Bowl Pool
College football bowl season is upon us, and I’m back after a bye week to go over the best strategies to win your office bowl pool! Conference Championship Week gave me my first winless week since writing this column, but I’m ready to bounce back to examine some of the best bowl games for pool players. A typical college bowl pool has players picking the winners of each bowl game and ranking them by confidence, so that the games with the highest confidence level garner the most points. This setup makes the pool multi-faceted; not only does the player have to have a good idea who is better amongst the two teams in each game, but he or she must also have a good idea where that discrepancy ranks amongst the other games. The best strategy to combat this is to have some type of ranking system so that the hierarchy of teams and discrepancies between teams can be measured easily. I’ve compiled my own ranking system based on the best college football metrics, such as Football Outsiders’ F/+ and ESPN’s FPI. Once a player has an idea of where each bowl team ranks hierarchically, there are two facets of the game that are crucial to winning: 1) making correct predictions in the games ranked as highest confidence, and 2) finding the smart predictions that most of the players are missing.
1) Ranking Predictions by Confidence: since the picks are ranked by points, it is crucial that the top-ranked predictions in a pool are correct to have a chance to win. This is where the measurement of team discrepancies comes into play. In my own model, I’ve determined four bowls that have the highest discrepancy level between teams, thus making them the best games to rank as high confidence games:
Boca Raton Bowl: Florida Atlantic vs. Akron
Luckily for Florida Atlantic, they have the privilege of playing their bowl game in their home stadium, which gives them the rare home advantage during bowl season. Akron’s rushing defense ranks 119th in the country according to S&P+, while FAU ranks 7th in rushing offense, providing a massive mismatch for the Owls. Lane Kiffin also gives FAU a coaching advantage through his experience with larger programs. Rank the Owls highly, because this game has the largest ranking discrepancy of any bowl in my model.
Pick: Florida Atlantic
Independence Bowl: Florida State vs. Southern Mississippi
The Seminoles have had an extremely disappointing year, finishing 6-6 when they were considered playoff contenders at the start of the season. Their coach, Jimbo Fisher, left to coach at Texas A&M on a massive contract, so they are trending in a bad direction. However, this is still Florida State, a school with consistently one of the top recruiting classes that sends its players to the NFL as high draft picks. Despite their record, they’ve still beaten teams like Wake Forest and Florida and put up a fight against Miami and Louisville. Southern Mississippi plays in the weak Conference USA and lost to both Kentucky and Tennessee, both teams who’ve lost to Florida (who got demolished by Florida State) this season. Ride the Seminoles to an easy win at the top of the confidence list.
Pick: Florida State
Bahamas Bowl: UAB vs. Ohio
While neither of these teams competed for their conference titles, Ohio managed to beat the eventual MAC champion, giving Toledo its only conference loss. The largest discrepancy between these two teams in on the offensive side, where Ohio managed to earn an offensive S&P+ ranking of 33rd, just ahead of Clemson and Auburn, as opposed to UAB’s ranking of 89th. This might not be high on the list of watchable games, but it should be high on the confidence list, as Ohio is a significantly better team than UAB.
Pick: Ohio
Music City Bowl: Kentucky vs. Northwestern
After Northwestern started out 0-2 in Big Ten conference play, thanks to Penn State and Wisconsin, they went on a seven-game winning streak that still stands with wins against Iowa and Michigan State. Kentucky finished their season 7-5 after getting beat up amongst the inferior East division of the SEC. While Northwestern ranks just outside of the top 25 teams in my model, Kentucky ranks 72nd, just behind other disappointing Power 5 conference teams like Minnesota and Virginia. Northwestern’s stodgy defense guides them to an easy win, which means easy points for college bowl pool players.
Pick: Northwestern
2) Making contrarian picks: the best way to gain points on other players in your pool is to pick a game differently then they did and for that prediction to be correct. The strategy here is to identify the best teams that have a chance to win their bowls with a reasonable confidence level that have received the minority of picks by the other players in the pool. I’ve identified two games where the inferior team is picked in most pool entries on ESPN that can provide an advantage:
Belk Bowl: Texas A&M vs. Wake Forest
Although both teams here sport 7-5 records, Wake Forest has more impressive wins over teams like Louisville and N.C. State, while Texas A&M never really put up a fight against the SEC contenders. Wake Forest also has the second ranked passing offense according to S&P+, behind efficient QB John Wolford. The game will be played in Charlotte, making it practically a home game for the Demon Deacons. Texas A&M is drawing many more picks on ESPN than Wake Forest, making the Deacons a solid team to make a contrarian pick on.
Pick: Wake Forest
Heart of Dallas Bowl: Utah vs. West Virginia
West Virginia is receiving a healthy majority of the picks from pool entries on ESPN, which is understandable because Utah was mauled in conference play this year, finishing 3-6, while West Virginia finished 5-4 in the Big 12. However, QB Will Grier will probably not return from a broken finger, limiting West Virginia’s likely production on offense. The Mountaineers’ defense has been awful this year, ranking 103rd in S&P+. They’ve been able to win games by relying on their offense, but without Grier, they might be unable to overcome against a Utah team that’s average 29.5 points on offense per game.
Pick: Utah