Jessup Pope (JP) College Football Final Rankings and Bowl Predictions

Below are the final JP rankings of the regular season. We account for the Army-Navy game in our rankings and I have no idea why the college football playoff (CFP) committee does not. Interestingly, Bowling Green has stealthily worked their way to #7, just ahead of Stanford. You might recall from our initial post that we fully expected our rankings to increasingly cohere to expectations as the season wore on (e.g., observe that we share 7 of the same top 10 as the final CFP rankings) yet nonetheless end with some surprises, and I’d say that is exactly what has happened.

Bowl game predictions

Whenever I tell people about the success of our ranking system, one of the question I am reliably asked is “yes, but how does it fare against Vegas?” I agree that Vegas is an appropriate benchmark for success in that they excel at selecting a favorite and setting an appropriate line (Vegas’ goal is for bettors to be evenly divided between the two sides of the line as that is how they make the most money with the least risk). In our first post I mentioned that we have beaten Vegas 56% of the time, a claim much easier to make than to substantiate. So here is our chance to back it up by making a priori predictions. Below you can find our forecasted winners for all 40 bowl games other than the national championship. Each of the bowl opponents are listed in the table below, the Vegas favorite is the first team listed (odds are even for the last two bowls), our projected winner is in bold, and our projected win margin is in the rightmost column.

There are two games in which we predict rather large margins of victory: Bowling Green over Georgia Southern by approximately 4 touchdowns and Arkansas over K State by more than 3 TDs. None of these teams are ranked though both of our projected winners are favored by Vegas.

Another interesting match-up involves North Carolina and Baylor: our system has had less respect for both of these teams (relative to the CFP) all season. Nonetheless, our two systems end up making the same prediction in this match: NC over Baylor. Perhaps even more curiously, Vegas favors Baylor. I find this curious because when there is disagreement between the 3 systems about the favorite, this is the least likely event (other possible events: (1) Vegas and our system align but not CFP, (2) Vegas and the CFP align but not JP).

Also, though our system favors Oklahoma over Clemson, in contrast to the CFP, Vegas currently favors OU by 4. This puts our system in the strange situation of being guaranteed to outpredict one system (either the CFP or Vegas) but virtually guaranteed to lose to the other. Only if OU wins by 1-3 points can our model beat both systems. My favorite bowls are where the CFP and Vegas align against the JP rankings, such as the Fiesta Bowl where both our competitors agree that Ohio State will defeat Notre Dame yet our system nonetheless predicts an Irish win.

Lastly, our system appears to have little respect for the Big 12 – only predicting 2 wins out of 7 games. Conversely, it expects Pac 12 and SEC teams to both win 7 out of 10 games.

Date	Bowl	Vegas Favorite	Opponent	Predicted Win Margin
2015-12-19	GILDAN NEW MEXICO BOWL	Arizona	New Mexico	2.3
2015-12-19	ROYAL PURPLE LAS VEGAS BOWL	Utah	BYU	5.7
2015-12-19	RAYCOM MEDIA CAMELLIA BOWL	Appalachian State	Ohio	5.7
2015-12-20	AUTONATION CURE BOWL	San Jose State	Georgia State	5.7
2015-12-20	R+L CARRIERS NEW ORLEANS BOWL	Louisiana Tech	Arkansas State	5.7
2015-12-21	MIAMI BEACH BOWL	Western Kentucky	South Florida	2.3
2015-12-22	FAMOUS IDAHO POTATO BOWL	Utah State	Akron	5.7
2015-12-23	MARMOT BOCA RATON BOWL	Temple	Toledo	5.7
2015-12-23	SAN DIEGO COUNTY CREDIT UNION POINSETTIA BOWL	Boise State	NIU	10.7
2015-12-24	GODADDY BOWL	Bowling Green	Georgia Southern	28.7
2015-12-24	POPEYES BAHAMAS BOWL	Western Michigan	Middle Tennessee	13.3
2015-12-25	HAWAI’I BOWL	Cincinnati	San Diego State	1.0
2015-12-26	ST. PETERSBURG BOWL	Marshall	Connecticut	2.3
2015-12-26	HYUNDAI SUN BOWL	Washington State	Miami (FL)	2.3
2015-12-26	ZAXBY’S HEART OF DALLAS BOWL	Washington	Southern Miss	10.7
2015-12-26	NEW ERA PINSTRIPE BOWL	Indiana	Duke	8.3
2015-12-26	CAMPING WORLD INDEPENDENCE BOWL	Virginia Tech	Tulsa	8.3
2015-12-27	FOSTER FARMS BOWL	UCLA	Nebraska	1.0
2015-12-28	MILITARY BOWL PRESENTED BY NORTHROP GRUMMAN	Navy	Pittsburgh	5.7
2015-12-28	QUICK LANE BOWL	Minnesota	Central Michigan	2.3
2015-12-29	LOCKHEED MARTIN ARMED FORCES BOWL	California	Air Force	5.7
2015-12-29	RUSSELL ATHLETIC BOWL	Baylor	North Carolina	5.7
2015-12-30	NOVA HOME LOANS ARIZONA BOWL	Colorado State	Nevada	2.3
2015-12-30	ADVOCARE V100 TEXAS BOWL	LSU	Texas Tech	8.3
2015-12-30	BIRMINGHAM BOWL	Auburn	Memphis	8.3
2015-12-30	BELK BOWL	Mississippi State	NC State	10.7
2015-12-31	FRANKLIN AMERICAN MORTGAGE MUSIC CITY BOWL	Texas A&M	Louisville	1.0
2015-12-31	HOLIDAY BOWL	USC	Wisconsin	10.7
2015-12-31	CHICK-FIL-A PEACH BOWL	Florida State	Houston	2.3
2015-12-31	CAPITAL ONE ORANGE BOWL – CFP SEMIFINAL	Oklahoma	Clemson	1.0
2016-01-01	GOODYEAR COTTON BOWL – CFP SEMIFINAL	Alabama	Michigan State	2.3
2016-01-01	OUTBACK BOWL	Tennessee	Northwestern	16.3
2016-01-01	BUFFALO WILD WINGS CITRUS BOWL	Michigan	Florida	5.7
2016-01-01	BATTLEFROG FIESTA BOWL	Ohio State	Notre Dame	5.7
2016-01-01	ROSE BOWL GAME PRES. BY NORTHWESTERN MUTUAL	Stanford	Iowa	5.7
2016-01-02	ALLSTATE SUGAR BOWL	Ole Miss	Oklahoma State	13.3
2016-01-02	TAXSLAYER BOWL	Georgia	Penn State	1.0
2016-01-02	AUTOZONE LIBERTY BOWL	Arkansas	Kansas State	21.7
2016-01-02	VALERO ALAMO BOWL	Oregon	TCU	1.0
2016-01-03	MOTEL 6 CACTUS BOWL	West Virginia	Arizona State	5.7
2016-01-12	CFP NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP GAME PRESENTED BY AT&T	TBD	TBD