All Movelor’s Week 5 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?
It still lags behind last year’s season-long average (a 12.9-point miss of the true scoring margin), and it’s behind betting markets over the course of the season (those currently average a 13.1-point miss, while Movelor’s at 14.2). As expected, though, it’s improving week over week, and Week 4 was its best week yet. In FBS vs. FBS games, Movelor missed the final margin in Week 4 by an average of 12.8 points. That was only 0.4 points less accurate than the closing spread.
You still might be able to find some teams on whom Movelor’s too slow to adapt (we’ll be posting about some of those on the Substack later this afternoon), but this late into the season, Movelor is getting its wits about it. It’s not omniscient, but it means something.
Here’s what it’s got this week:
Big Games
- Alabama by 4.8 over Georgia
- Notre Dame by 14.2 over Louisville
- Kansas State by 4.9 over Oklahoma State
- Boise State by 0.9 over Washington State
Playoff-Impacting Games
- Miami by 14.9 over Virginia Tech
- BYU by 5.1 at Baylor
- Michigan by 25.9 over Minnesota
- Mississippi by 17.5 over Kentucky
- James Madison by 21.5 over Ball State
- USC by 16.8 over Wisconsin
- UCF by 13.0 over Colorado
- Liberty by 1.5 at Appalachian State
- UNLV by 4.2 over Fresno State
- Texas by 39.3 over Mississippi State
- Ohio State by 26.5 at Michigan State
- Iowa State by 11.4 at Houston
- Clemson by 28.0 over Stanford
- Penn State by 19.3 over Illinois
- Utah by 7.9 over Arizona
- Oregon by 23.1 at UCLA
Interesting Games
- Army by 14.8 at Temple
- Washington by 2.4 at Rutgers
- Maryland by 2.4 at Indiana
- UAB by 0.3 over Navy
- Tulane by 11.0 over USF
- Oklahoma by 7.9 at Auburn
- Texas A&M by 5.5 over Arkansas
- Duke by 8.9 over North Carolina
- Florida State by 0.7 over SMU
Big FCS Games
- South Dakota by 5.9 over Southern Illinois
- North Dakota State by 14.0 at Illinois State
- Sacramento State by 1.0 at Northern Arizona
- Idaho by 6.8 at UC Davis
**
Some highlights from Week 4:
- Movelor got the exact margin correct on four games, or was at least within half a point: UTSA beat Houston Christian by 38. West Virginia beat Kansas by 4. LSU beat UCLA by 17. Valparaiso beat Roosevelt by 8. This last one was lucky—we assign that blanket rating to non-Division I teams like Roosevelt—but we’ll take credit for the others.
- Movelor had some big misses as well, of course, with none bigger than underestimating Lindenwood by 62.7 points against St. Thomas. This was partly an overestimate of St. Thomas, who has been puzzlingly terrible after running at the top of the Pioneer League last year. But, credit to Lindenwood. Making moves.
- Between FBS teams, the biggest miss for Movelor was its 37.0-point whiff on K-State/BYU. Credit to BYU. Discredit to Kansas State.
- Movelor’s now only trailing SP+ by 1.2 points and FPI by 0.9, down from 1.4 and 1.1 entering the week. Closing the gap. (We won’t close the gap all the way, but we expect to get both those numbers within a point.
**
Overall stats through 507 games:
- FBS vs. FBS: 70.1% correct winners; 14.2-point absolute average error margin
- All FBS: 79.3% correct winners; 13.7-point absolute average error margin
- FCS vs. FCS: 70.1% correct winners; 13.5-point absolute average error margin
- All Division I: 76.9% correct winners; 14.2-point absolute average error margin
