The Binion Index Week 4

The top two separate themselves, and GT cracks the top 40.

All of a sudden, most of the country is one third through their schedule, and things are starting to stratify.

Week 4 Highlights

• GT cracks the top 40, after beating the spread by 22 and 37 points respectively the past two weeks. TBI sees GT-Pitt as a toss-up.
• The stratification between the top 2 and everybody else is as large as I can remember. They both get supposedly tough tests this weekend, but TBI has Alabama by 19.5 and UGA by 21.
• I really dislike that Clemson is just barely hanging on to number 3. But there’s two reasons: the defense has still been excellent, and preseason ratings still account for 53% of the week 4 rating. Without that, Clemson would be about 40th.
• Cincinnati has their toughest test of the season, and the model has them as almost a 3 point road favorite heading into South Bend.
• Baylor is a team to watch in the Big 12; they’ve been rocketing up the rankings.

Tracking the Model

The Binion Index had its best prediction week of the season in week 4, hitting 55% ATS with a mean error of 12.5 points. I’m honestly surprised at how consistent the model has been ATS week to week. Remember, we track the model’s performance by analyzing how it does against the Vegas spread over the course of the season, and how it does compared compared to the actual point margin of each game. Winning 55% of games ATS is typically considered the gold standard of performance, and hitting an absolute error of 12.5 points per game is excellent.

The college prediction tracker keeps up with ATS and absolute error performance of almost 50 different models. After four weeks, the Binion Index would be 1st overall ATS and above average in absolute error.

Season to Date ATS: 108-89-5 (54.7%)

ATS Goal: >=55%

Season to Date Absolute Error: 13.7

Absolute Error Goal: <=12.5

Game Predictions

I got a couple of questions last week about game predictions using the model. Two quick things:

• I post those predictions every Thursday on my twitter
• You can easily get that prediction yourself by subtracting one team’s rating from another and adding 2.5 points for the home team.

Happy footballing this week!