Week 2 is in the books and for Auburn it is better luck next year. Ouch. Oh well, let’s see what we can learn from the computer model on playoffpredictor.com

The model went .615 (29-18-1) which was tied for 2nd out of 37 computer models for the week. Outstanding! And remember, this is with no preseason data of any kind. Just the results of the games played on week 1. Some of the more predictable results were Oklahoma beating Houston by 4 and Penn State beating Bowling Green by 7, when the spreads were -27.5 and -34 respectively. The computer model said -18 and -10.5, which were significant improvements on Mean Squared Error. Speaking of Mean Squared Error, the model went +142 and Absolute error of 3.3, which were dead last and next to last respectively out of the 37 computers. This is to be expected as other computers use player, team and preseason data. The model predicts no blowouts this early in the season, although we know there will be blowouts in week 1-4.

I don’t like this 12 team playoff. After spending last week updating the logic for 12 teams instead of 4 the computer sees these probabilities for teams making the playoff after 2 weeks of data:

Note the top likelihood is Syracuse, due to an ease of schedule. It wont last. I’d be surprised to see them still on top of the ACC by week 4.

Right now it says SEC gets 3.5 teams, Big10 gets 3 teams, Big 12 gets 1.5 teams, ACC gets 2 teams, and G5 gets 2 teams. I’d expect by season end it will be SEC 4 teams, Big10 3 teams, Big 12 2 teams, ACC 2 teams, and G5 1 team. I think the talk and season end is who is the 12th team, a 8-4 Missouri or a 10-2 Utah. Ugh. Who cares. What a horrible debate to have.