All Movelor’s Week 4 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.
How’s it doing this year?
Results continue to trail last year’s final number (last year we averaged a 12.9-point miss on the final margin in FBS vs. FBS games; this year we’re at 14.7 points), but as it always goes this time of year, they’re improving week over week. In Week 0 and Week 1, Movelor averaged a 15.3-point miss. In Week 2, that dropped to 14.7 points. In Week 3, it was 14.3. We’re trailing last year’s results, which is ironic given we made those changes to offseason calculations with the intent of improving early-season performance, but we knew any improvement there would be marginal, and the whole industry’s having a harder time this year than last. Last year was evidently more predictable than this year has been. It’s easy to blame everything on unlimited free transfers, but this might have something to do with unlimited free transfers.
Overall? Movelor hasn’t had a great year so far, but it isn’t far from expectations. You’ll see some weird numbers in here, and some of those (Michigan) are instances where Movelor’s obviously wrong. As always, we’ll work on updates this offseason to better account for this kind of team in the future. Others, though (USC), are instances where Movelor’s probably a worthwhile voice of caution.
Here’s what it’s got this week.
Big Games
- Michigan by 13.6 over USC
- Oklahoma State by 4.9 over Utah
- Tennessee by 5.6 at Oklahoma
- Kansas State by 8.0 at BYU
Playoff-Impacting Games (one or more teams with >10% playoff probability)
- Washington State by 13.3 over San Jose State
- Ohio State by 42.8 over Marshall
- North Carolina by 3.0 over James Madison
- Clemson by 18.1 over NC State
- Memphis by 15.7 at Navy
- Penn State by 59.2 over Kent State
- Louisville by 6.7 over Georgia Tech
- Notre Dame by 33.0 over Miami (OH)
- Missouri by 27.9 over Vanderbilt
- Liberty by 7.6 over East Carolina
- Toledo by 3.6 at Western Kentucky
- Miami (FL) by 11.8 at USF
- Mississippi by 39.9 over Georgia Southern
- Texas by 55.2 over Louisiana Monroe
- Boise State by 35.4 over Portland State
Interesting Games
- Appalachian State by 2.9 over South Alabama
- Syracuse by 11.2 over Stanford
- Nebraska by 4.2 over Illinois
- Maryland by 21.4 over Villanova
- Tulane by 6.4 at Louisiana
- Florida by 3.2 at Mississippi State
- Coastal Carolina by 3.2 over Virginia
- Nevada by 9.1 over Eastern Washington
- Pitt by 18.8 over Youngstown State
- Texas Tech by 9.4 over Arizona State
- Northern Illinois by 8.0 over Buffalo
- Auburn by 6.0 over Arkansas
- SMU by 1.8 over TCU
- FIU by 3.0 over Monmouth
- Florida State by 9.5 over California
- Boston College by 5.3 over Michigan State
- Hawaii by 2.1 over Northern Iowa
Big FCS Games
- Holy Cross by 1.5 over Yale
- Montana by 18.4 over Western Carolina
- Furman by 1.2 at William & Mary
- Incarnate Word by 1.7 over Northern Arizona
**
Some highlights from Week 3:
- Movelor got the exact margin correct in two games: Oklahoma beat Tulane by 15, and Cal Poly beat Western Oregon by 17. With Western Oregon a non-Division I team (a blanket –36.0 rating in Movelor’s system), this latter one is lucky.
- But! The biggest misses were unlucky, or something like it. Four of the five biggest misses this week, led by Houston Christian’s 63-point victory over Louisiana College (Movelor predicted a 14-point spread), involved non-Division I schools. The biggest miss on a D1 vs. D1 game came in Notre Dame’s trip to Purdue, where the Irish outperformed their projected 17-point margin by 42 points.
- Movelor’s trailing SP+ by 1.4 points and FPI by 1.1 points. SP+ has matched the Vegas spread in its accuracy so far this year, but it had a worse time in Week 3. A big hat-tip to those guys. They’re better systems than ours.
**
Overall stats through 388 games:
- FBS vs. FBS: 70.7% correct winners; 14.7-point absolute average error margin
- All FBS: 81.3% correct winners; 13.8-point absolute average error margin
- FCS vs. FCS: 68.2% correct winners; 13.1-point absolute average error margin
- All Division I: 78.1% correct winners; 14.4-point absolute average error margin
