College Bowl Brain Surgery

In late November I joined a fellow ND alumnus to watch the $14.5 Million Dollar Game. During the game, we struck up a conversation regarding the upcoming college bowl games, at which point he e noted a very sincere and convicted theorem. The premise, he contended, was that teams from larger, “power” conferences historically did not fare well in lesser bowls against teams from smaller conferences; the context was against the spread, not necessarily straight up. His theory was based on the assertion that for these larger-program schools, a lesser bowl was a disappointment, while for small-program schools, any bowl game is a season-ending sweetener.

I decided to put the theory to the test and track the bowl results, along with how teams in the small-vs.-large program categories fared. To make the exercise interesting, I further decided to collect predictions from five sources:
1. A brain surgeon (and ND grad);
2. An unemployed stay-at-home dad (yours truly);
3. A random guy we found on the Internet (a Michigan grad);
4. A Midwest lawyer (an ND and Michigan grad); and
5. A reputed Chicago-area gambler.

Here is a spreadsheet of the results. In summary, the predictors were:
1. Brain Surgeon: 15-12-12.
2. Unemployed Dad: 12-15-13.
3. Michigan Mike: 11-16-14.
4. Motown Lawyer: 12-15-15.
5. Vegas Pointz*: 18-9-1

So what can we conclude from this exercise?
1. Brain surgeons ain’t so smart when it comes to college gridiron prognosticating, but they’re smarter than unemployed dads or Midwestern lawyers;
2. All of the aforementioned ND boys did better than Michigan Mike—draw your own conclusions; and
3. Never mess with a professional gambler, because he’ll school you 64% of the time.

*Vegas Pointz, had he been actually wagering money, would have upped his actual record to 19-8-1 based on picking the Fiesta Bowl winner.