In his February 15, 2008 column, Gregg Easterbrook (aka the Tuesday Morning Quarterback) described a couple of objective ways to pick football games.
The first method is the model of simplicity: always pick the home team. This yielded a correct prediction 152 times out of 267 games (56.9%, including the playoffs). Some historical analysis shows this can be surprisingly good (63.9% correct in 1985) or surprisingly bad (47.5% NFL and AFL combined, in 1968). Still, at the very least, the "Pick the Home Team" method provides a base-line point of comparison for other techniques.
The second method Easterbrook discusses is a method I will call the Isaacson-Tarbell Predictor: always pick the team with the better record (in case of a tie, choose the home team). TMQ claims this yielded a correct prediction 183 times out of 267 games (68.5%, including the playoffs). This is pretty spectacular, considering (as TMQ points out), none of the 8 experts featured on ESPN's "Expert Picks" did as well (Jaws came closest, at 68.3%).
Some questions for further investigation: how good is ITB (the Isaacson-Tarbell Predictor)? Was 2007 a fluke season? Can some variant of SRS, or some other power index algorithm do better?
Stay tuned for further details.
