Before Bahamas Bowl - Welcome to Bowl pool 2019-2020

Hello, and welcome to the 2019-2020 Annual College Football Bowl Pool!!!  Compliments of Yahoo’s terrible e-mail server, there are still sheets coming in.  They will probably all show up all at once later today.  One thing I can tell already just from the sheets I do have is that we will finish with >50 entries, but probably less than the 66 we had last year.  However, I said I’d pay out 3 places if I got over 50 entries, and we will easily clear that hurdle.

This year’s pool is different from previous years.  For one thing, they are starting much later than they have in year’s past.  I’m not sure if that’s a product of the calendar, or if teams are adding more games, so the Bowls start later or what.  Nothing makes me happier in these pools as when they decide to space the games out so there aren’t a ton of them on any one day.  I don’t know why some Bowl games don’t do this, unless they don’t think they can draw enough fans on a weeknight, so have to schedule them on Saturday or Sunday.  Come to think of it, seeing some of the half-empty stadiums showing 2 6-6 teams play, I guess anything they can do to get fans is probably right.  It just makes it harder for me is all I’m saying.  Luckily for us, once the calendar turns to 2020, games come along about 1 a day.  That makes things pretty fun at the end of the pool.  Every game should be high stakes.  I like that.

Most of you already know this, but the way I score this is a little different than some other pools.  I total up the number of points people have won, but I also show the net points because I think that’s the most important metric early on.  For example, anyone can front load the points, do mediocre and show up at the top of the standings.  If they’ve lost a lot of points to get there, that’s not a healthy sheet.  The standings should reflect that.

Once we get past 12/31, I will calculate the probability of winning the pool (or any of the payout places).  I will have more on that as we get closer to that point.  I will also be able to show if sheets are going to be mathematically eliminated from contention.  It’s always fun to see people sweat a game they thought meant nothing because if they lose, they’ll be out of the pool.

We start the pool with two games today.  Fun fact about today’s two games.  Vegas has them with exactly the same point spread.  You’d think that would mean that distributions would be about the same, but they aren’t.  The Bahamas Bowl is the game with the 33^rd most points on it, while the Frisco Bowl is 22^nd.  Were it not for some late arriving sheets, the Bahamas Bowl would have been in the bottom 3 of Bowl Games.  I’m not sure why that would be.  It can’t be that people don’t know the teams.  Granted, nobody knows anything about Buffalo or Charlotte, but does anyone really know anything about Utah State or Kent State?  I really don’t know.

Here are the particulars:

Bahamas Bowl:

Vegas Line:  Buffalo -6.5

Picks for Buffalo: 48 (16.77 average)

Picks for Charlotte: 8 (9.63 average)

Median Pick: Buffalo for 15.5

For those that don’t know, the median pick is pretty important.  If you lined everyone’s pick on a number line, the median is where ½ of the picks are on one side and ½ are on the other.  What’s important about this is, say you took Buffalo for 7 points.  Because the median is Buffalo for 15.5, you are better having Charlotte win because the 7 point you lose will be less than more than half the field.  You probably will move up in the net point’s standings if that happens.

The second game of the day is the Frisco Bowl, which is apparently played in a place called Frisco, Texas as opposed to San Francisco.  I’d say, “Imagine the disappointment”, but honestly, if you are a big enough fan of college football to go to a bowl game, maybe Texas is more appealing than San Francisco.

Here are the particulars:

Vegas line: Utah State -6.5

Picks for Utah State: 48 (20.19 average)

Picks for Kent State: 8 (6.88 average)

Median Pick: Utah State for 20 points.

So the distribution is exactly the same (48 / 8), but the points skew higher.  Again, these two games seem like mirror images of each other, so I’m not sure why the difference.

OK.  It looks like the last batch of picks showed up.  I’ll send something out after the late game.  At that time, I’ll have standings, commentary about tomorrow’s games and a final list of picks.  I’ll also post the spreadsheet I’m using to keep score, so you can play along at home if you want.

Good luck to everyone!!!!!!