Bowl Pool 2015 - Games #2 & #3.

I was looking through the games overall and I have some good news.  First off, everyone filled out their sheets correctly.  A few people didn't include a tiebreaker, but there is so much time between the last Bowl game and the Championship game, that I can get the information in that time if I need it.  Given my loathing for tiebreakers, I'm hoping that I don't need it.  There are 891 total points per sheet, so the idea that 2 of them would finish with exactly the same score seems like low odds.

In other good news, there are no games where everyone took the same side.  At least 2 people took every team.  That's good to see.  It means that there's usually something at stake in every game.

For those that wonder why I use the median pick when I look at each game, I think it's more useful than the mean pick, since the picks aren't uniformly distributed across all points.  The way I like to think of it is that if say the median pick of a game is Team X for 20 points.  If took Team Y of Team X for less than 20 points, you probably want Team Y to win, since that means you will be gaining ground on more than half of the field.  That's not always the case, but it's a good rule of thumb.

So, the second game of the day today overlaps with the first game.  The second game is the New Mexico Bowl, and despite the fact that this is essentially a home game for New Mexico, only 5 people took them to win.  Maybe that's because the point spread was Arizona -8.5.  The median pick for this game was Arizona for 27.5 points.  As I mentioned in the first post, this is the game with the most points wagered on it today, even though it only ranks #16 in overall points.  22 people have Arizona in their top 10 teams, while only one brave soul took New Mexico to be in their top 10 (Sally R.).  That's a brave pick, and if it comes through, it will be a huge boon to her chances to win this thing.  I like that kind of brave picking.

The third game of the day is the Las Vegas Bowl featuring Utah vs. BYU.  This seems like a blood rivalry to me, and it makes me wonder why they don't actually play during the regular season.  I think this game also featured the best odds of a bench clearing brawl as Utah has publicly accused BYU of playing dirty.  That could make this game either interesting or sad to watch depending on your opinion of bench clearing brawls.  Unfortunately, the points distribution doesn't make this seem like it's going to get many people to the TV to watch it, as there are only 707 points wagered on this game.

The median pick is Utah for 6.5 point (the mean is Utah for 9.02 points).  28 people took Utah (average points = 19.71) and 16 took BYU (average points = 9.69).  No one took BYU as a top 10 team.   There are only 2 people that even have BYU for even as much as 17 points (James R for 27, Ally H for 25).  So, even the BYU fans, aren't really that rabid of BYU fans.  There are 7 people that have Utah in their top 10 including 2 people that have them as their top pick (Ray R., Scott H. #1).  The funny thing is that Scott H. is Ally H.'s Dad, so I hope that doesn't make things uncomfortable in that house.  Just remember, it's all for fun everyone.  :)

I'll be back later with the first score update and some more analysis of the later games.  Good luck to everyone!!!!