All Movelor’s Week 3 predictions are now live at this link.
What is Movelor?
It’s our college football model’s rating system, one which measures the gap in quality between every FBS and FCS team. Last season, it was 0.8 points less accurate on a per-game basis than the betting market’s closing spread.
The start to this season hasn’t been as strong as the end to last year. Movelor’s missed by 1.6 points more, on average, than the closing spread, meaning it’s twice as far behind the markets as it was in the 2023–24 season. It usually continues to close that gap as the season progresses—the gap was 1.7 entering last week—but the early season is not its strong suit. We made some improvements this summer, but we have more to make.
Here’s where Movelor has this week’s biggest and most prominent games:
Big Games
- Kansas State by 6.5 over Arizona
- Missouri by 24.2 over Boston College
- West Virginia by 7.5 over Pitt
- Oregon by 13.3 over Oregon State
- Washington by 4.8 over Washington State
Playoff Hopefuls
- Texas State by 0.6 over Arizona State
- Kansas by 4.9 over UNLV
- Alabama by 23.0 over Wisconsin
- Michigan by 43.5 over Arkansas State
- Florida State by 10.6 over Memphis
- Oklahoma State by 24.1 over Tulsa
- Oklahoma by 14.9 over Tulane
- Miami (FL) by 22.7 over Ball State
- Notre Dame by 17.3 over Purdue
- Utah by 26.4 over Utah State
- Liberty by 21.8 over UTEP
- Mississippi by 27.1 over Wake Forest
- Texas by 34.2 over UTSA
- Mississippi State by 6.6 over Toledo
- Georgia by 22.0 over Kentucky
- Tennessee by 55.6 over Kent State
Interesting Games
- LSU by 6.3 over South Carolina
- Miami (OH) by 8.0 over Cincinnati
- Texas A&M by 2.4 over Florida
- Iowa by 7.6 over Troy
- TCU by 0.9 over UCF
- Colorado by 8.2 over Colorado State
- UCLA by 8.7 over Indiana
- Maryland by 7.0 over Virginia
Big Games – FCS
- Idaho by 12.9 over Albany
- Mercer by 0.8 over Chattanooga
- Southern Illinois by 8.0 over Incarnate Word
- Southern Utah by 0.8 over UC Davis
**
Some highlights from Week 2:
- Movelor was within half a point on three different games. What’s weird about this is that two of them involved FCS teams playing non-Division I schools, a category of team which gets a blanket –36.0 rating in the system. We choose that number intentionally, but it’s still goofy to have those turn out so accurate. The third—the one Movelor actually predicted—was Youngstown State’s 34-point win over Valparaiso.
- Of the two biggest misses, one involved a non-Division I school, with Movelor 76 points off of the final spread between Arkansas-Pine Bluff and Arkansas Baptist. I will not look up what Arkansas Baptist is, for fear of becoming implicated in a Bishop Sycamore-style crime. (UAPB remains the worst-rated team in Division I, per Movelor, but it’s now only a tenth of a point behind Marist.) The other biggest miss, a 47.1-point error, came in the Texas State vs. UTSA game, where Movelor had the Roadrunners favored by 8.1 and they lost by 39.
- Movelor’s been 1.1 points per game worse than ESPN’s FPI so far and 1.8 points per game worse than SP+. We tip our hat.
Overall stats through 270 games:
- FBS vs. FBS: 67.0% correct winners; 14.9-point absolute average error margin
- All FBS: 81.5% correct winners; 14.0-point absolute average error margin
- FCS vs. FCS: 69.8% correct winners; 12.2-point absolute average error margin
- All Division I: 78.4% correct winners; 14.4-point absolute average error margin
