Unbeaten Watch – The Odds

I’m in the process of developing a model that gives odds of various teams reaching the BCS title game from this point out. In doing so, calculating the odds certain teams remain unbeaten is integral.

Originally I was using Sagarin’s predictor, but an astute reader asked if that was the most accurate to be found. Turns out, it isn’t (though it isn’t bad either) According to The Prediction Tracker while Sagarin does a reasonable job of predicting the winner (0.76339 this year), he is less than stellar this year or in the past against the spread (0.47126 this year).

It appears the group most accurate in predicting both the winner and against the spread is statfox. While they are 0.75445 straight up, they are 0.52300 ATS. There are a couple of others around their record, but with a 448 game sample, and the ease of using their method, I’m going to be using statfox.

Here’s the updated chances of the remaining unbeatens staying that way –

Oregon – 61.00%
Auburn – 9.04%
Boise – 66.48%
TCU – 47.43%
Utah – 31.74%

In Auburn’s case a hypothetical matchup against an SEC East champ is included with the Tigers as a 7 point favorite.

Auburn’s chances are severely handicapped by their game remaining at Alabama. Every predictor I’ve found installs ‘Bama as a favorite, and in the case of statfox the Tide are a 14 point favorite.

If Oregon and Auburn win out, as the current BCS one and two, they will play for the title. However, the odds of that appear to be only 5.51% at this point in time.

I’ll be back later this week with the updated BCS model.