It’s another weekend to celebrate as we get to watch college football. Soon, we’ll have a full slate of games, but as we continue to move closer to that day, we’re still given some interesting matchups this weekend. This dashboard is the college football watchability index, which highlights the most- and least- (if there could ever be such a thing with college football) 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).
Typically, the most interesting games lie in the upper-left hand quadrant where games are expected to be both close and high scoring. Prime matchups in this quadrant include Oklahoma-Texas, Mississippi St.-Kentucky, Virginia Tech-North Carolina, and Florida-Texas A&M. We should learn more about these teams this weekend. The lower-left hand quadrant features expected tight games, but with lower expected scoring. Pitt-BC and Kansas St.-TCU appear to be the most interesting games, but (as I’ve been saying here for a few weeks now) don’t sleep on Coastal Carolina-UL-Lafayette in an important Sun Belt game that should be fun. The lower-right hand quadrant features games that are not expected to be close and are likely to feature lower scores. There are some big-name teams here (Notre Dame, Auburn), but likely the most intriguing matchups here are if the games do not play to script and Tennessee and Vanderbilt keep it close against Georgia and South Carolina, respectively. The top-right hand quadrant features games that are likely to be easy wins for the favored team, but with lots of points likely to be scored. Alabama (vs Mississippi) and Clemson (vs Miami, FL) lie here, as we can see which team appears to be more dominant this week. In addition, we get another opportunity to see if BYU can continue to lay waste to the competition.
If I had to choose one game in each timeslot on Saturday to watch, I’ll continue with my Sun Belt love and choose Coastal-ULL over Oklahoma-Texas early, Pitt-BC midday, and Mississippi St.-Kentucky in the evening. Looking forward to watching these, and many others simultaneously, this weekend. Enjoy the games!
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