The Binion Index Week 7

College football alignment happens when power brokers get together. College football schedules are worked out many years in advance. No team can control who they plan in any given year. Teams can control how they play.

Cincinnati and Coastal Carolina are leaving a wake of carnage in their paths. As fall is squarely upon us, those two outstanding G5 teams have found their way into the top 5 of The Binion Index. It’s a good time to pause and appreciate just how well both teams are playing, You can watch Coastal play tomorrow night against Appalachian State and watch Cincy play in the early slate on Saturday, both on ESPN2. I would highly recommend making both teams appointment viewing this week.

GT Check-In

• Current Record: 3-3
• Current Ranking and Rating: 64th, 1.33 points above average

A couple of people asked me how GT could move down so much during a bye week. GT’s rating only dropped 1.6 points; there’s a lot of congestion in this area of the ratings. And that happened because opponent strength continues to sort itself out. GT’s schedule fell about a dozen spots after this past weekend’s action.

• Record Expectations (based on underlying stats): 3.55-2.45
• Future Expectations (based on TBI): 2.14-3.86
• Final Projected Record: 5.14- 6.86

Week 6 Highlights

• Georgia has reached historically high rating territory. Alabama is excellent and likely the only team with a chance of competing with UGA before the playoff.
• The G5 has two excellent football teams, highlighted above, who both very much belong in the playoff conversation if they win out.
• Oklahoma has not impressed my computer yet. But the Caleb Williams offense seems to have the explosive element that the Sooners missed for the first 5 games of the season.
• The Big Ten East round robin is going to be fascinating, featuring 3 top 12 and 4 top 23 teams.
• Despite their loss in Salt Lake City, Arizona State is still my highest rated Pac12 team, but Oregon and Utah once again are in the driver’s seat for the championship game.
• I think we have co-favorites for the fanbases least happy with the model this week: Oklahoma State at #42 and Wake Forest at #80.

Tracking the Model

The Binion Index had an ok week 7, hitting 53% ATS with a mean error of 14.4 points.

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 six weeks, the Binion Index would be 1st overall ATS and 25th in absolute error.

Season to Date ATS: 194-165-6 (54.0%)

ATS Goal: >=55%

Season to Date Absolute Error: 13.7

Absolute Error Goal: <=12.5