College Football Handicapping with AOPR

This article is an offshoot of College Basketball AOPR Betting System that we enjoyed some success with this past college basketball season.

It's relatively simple to use, especially for those of you who have Excel. A college football card can be predicted in roughly 30 to 45 minutes, using stats readily available on the Internet.

Now, I'll admit to never testing the method out on college football, so don't go betting your bankroll on its selections.

Logically, it should work, but things seldom work the way they should in the sports betting world.

The System Premise

Long before college football used the BCS ratings and its now famous Strength of Schedule factor, sports bettors were doing the exact same thing. But instead of calling it Strength of Schedule, sports bettors referred to it as Average Opponent Power Rating, or AOPR.

AOPR is simply a way of looking at the opposition a team has played. Teams with higher AOPR figures have played tougher competition than teams with lower AOPR numbers.

A power rating is a numerical rating of a team, which in theory, is a way to compare that team to another team. If Notre Dame has a power rating of 95 points and Boston College has a power rating of 88 points, we would conclude that Notre Dame is seven points better than Boston College.

To find the AOPR for any team, merely add up the power rating of each opponent and divide by the number of games.

If Notre Dame had played the following teams with the following power ratings:
Navy (83)
Purdue (92)
Air Force (89)

Notre Dame's AOPR would be 88, as (83+92+88=264 and 264/3 = 88).

As that involves a fair amount of work, many sports bettors turn to USA Today's Jeff Sagarin and his power ratings, which happen to include a listing called SCHEDL, which stands for Strength of Schedule, which is the exact same thing as AOPR. The one difference is that Sagarin's Strength of Schedule numbers are influenced by his power ratings, although his ratings are likely to be as good as any that you'll find elsewhere.

Several other sports betting publications will also list AOPR figures for those who lack the time to calculate their own power ratings and AOPR figures.

The other numbers that a bettor will need are the average points for and average points allowed by each team. These are available in several places, including my favorite, www.thespread.com under college football match-ups, which will list the points scored and points allowed by each team.

Using the Method

For demonstration purposes, we'll use a game of Clemson at North Carolina. Clemson has an AOPR of 85 and scored 28 points and allows 24. North Carolina has an AOPR of 82 points and scores 23 points and allows 24.

Our first step is to divide the higher AOPR by the lower AOPR. In this case, we divide Clemson's 85 by NC's 82 and get a figure of 1.037. What this means is that Clemson has played a schedule that 3.7-percent more difficult than the teams North Carolina has played.

The second step is to take each team's offensive points for and divide that by the median points scored in college football (another method longtime readers will be familiar with), which is 27.75 points. Therefore, Clemson's 28 divided by 27.75 is .1.009, while North Carolina's 23 points divided by 27.75 points is .828.

Because Clemson has played the more difficult schedule, we will increase Clemson's offensive rating by the 3.7-percent from above, which gives us a new figure of 1.046.

We'll also decrease North Carolina's figure by the same 3.7-percent and get a new figure of .797.

Next, we'll take Clemson's figure of 1.046 and multiply that by North Carolina's points allowed, which is 24 and get a predicted score of 25.12 points, which rounded becomes 25 points.

Doing the same for North Carolina will show .797 multiplied by Clemson's points allowed of 24 points and will give us a predicted score of 19.12 points, which rounded down becomes 19.

Therefore our predicted score on the game is Clemson 25, North Carolina 19.

The final step is to add two points to the home team's predicted score and subtract two points from the road team's predicted score to allow for home field advantage.

You can make the home field advantage more or less, depending on your preference, but it's always better to subtract points from the road team and add points to the home team, so that you're not inflating the predicted total points.

In our example above, if North Carolina was the home team, our predicted Score would be Clemson 23, North Carolina 21. Many people will just add four points to the home team and get a predicted score of Clemson 25, North Carolina 23, which changes your predicted total points to 48, as opposed to 44.

Once we have our AOPR numbers and our points scored and points allowed, we're ready to begin.

If you need another example or two, visit the original article written for basketball, which has two more examples. Even though they are written from a basketball perspective, the calculation process is exactly the same.