College Football Watchability Index – December 3-5, 2020

Another week of college football is upon us. These dashboards present the college football watchability index, which highlights the most- and least-watchable games of the week. The absolute value of the point spread is on the horizontal axis and this represents a measure of uncertainty of outcome. Lower point spreads, in absolute value terms, are expected to be closer games. The total (over/under) is plotted on the vertical axis, with higher totals representing games that are expected to be higher scoring. The shape of the point representing each game represents day and start time. The color of the point is differentiated by the use of Sagarin Ratings for each team and sums them for the two teams playing in the game. Gold represents a combined high sum (could be 2 good teams or a dominant team in the game) and Red represents a combined low sum (not among the better teams playing in the game).

There are 3 dashboards presented this weekend, one for games Thursday, Friday, and Saturday early (before 2:30), one for Saturday midday, and the last one for Saturday evening and late. The most-watchable games are typically in the upper-left hand quadrant, where games are anticipated to be close and high-scoring, typically followed by the lower-left hand quadrant where games are expected to be close, but relatively lower-scoring. The best teams often are seen in the upper-right hand quadrant, which feature big point spreads and totals.

On the first visualization, Thursday-Saturday early, Ohio St.-Michigan St. is extremely important in terms of the college football playoff and is expected to be high-scoring, although not necessarily close. A couple of very good games are in the upper-left hand quadrant in Nebraska-Purdue and Memphis-Tulane, while games that are also expected to be close, but not as high-scoring (lower-left hand quadrant) include Oklahoma St.-TCU, Texas-Kansas St., and Texas A&M-Auburn.

For the midday games on Saturday, Indiana-Wisconsin is the best game despite having a very low total (low expected scoring). West Virginia-Iowa St. and Iowa-Illinois are both competitive games that are also located in the lower-left hand quadrant. The expected close and high-scoring games are not the highest quality of teams, relatively-speaking, but still offer some interesting storylines. Rounding out this time slot are games with playoff implications that are not expected to be close including Florida-Tennessee, Syracuse-Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt-Georgia.

On Saturday evening and late, the most important games are likely to be quite lopsided, according to the betting market, but does offer high scoring expectations. These games are Clemson-Virginia Tech and Alabama-LSU. If you are looking for closer, but still high-scoring games, a couple of PAC-12 games are interesting in this timeslot in Oregon-Cal and UCLA-Arizona St.

I was greatly looking forward to Liberty-Coastal Carolina as I’ve hyped both teams all season, but COVID looms with a possible cancellation here and the game is currently off-the-board line and total-wise. Hopefully that game does occur, but in any case, please enjoy the weekend of games.