All Movelor’s Week 6 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’s been a little worse this year (14.1-point average miss) than last year (12.9 points), but it keeps narrowing that margin every week. Week 5’s was not as strong a performance as Week 4’s, but we continue to make progress, which is the expectation. Movelor’s biggest weakness is the simplicity of its offseason adjustments.
Here’s what it’s got this week:
Big Games
- Louisville by 7.9 over SMU
- Missouri by 1.9 at Texas A&M
- Clemson by 6.8 at Florida State
- Michigan by 6.3 at Washington
- Miami by 4.9 at Cal
Playoff-Impacting Games
- UNLV by 11.2 over Syracuse
- Oregon by 31.7 over Michigan State
- Penn State by 22.8 over UCLA
- Ohio State by 23.3 over Iowa
- Mississippi by 10.6 at South Carolina
- Georgia by 27.3 over Auburn
- Alabama by 34.4 at Vanderbilt
- James Madison by 20.2 at Louisiana Monroe
- Boise State by 28.7 over Utah State
- Tennessee by 16.9 at Arkansas
- USC by 10.6 at Minnesota
- Iowa State by 13.8 over Baylor
- Arizona by 11.6 over Texas Tech
Interesting Games
- North Carolina by 2.4 over Pitt
- Army by 13.5 at Tulsa
- Navy by 1.0 at Air Force
- Indiana by 3.6 at Northwestern
- Rutgers by 0.3 at Nebraska
- Oklahoma State by 6.8 over West Virginia
- Florida by 2.1 over UCF
- Georgia Tech by 4.3 over Duke
Big FCS Games
- New Hampshire by 3.0 at Harvard
- Montana by 12.2 over Weber State
- North Dakota State by 15.9 over North Dakota
- Chattanooga by 1.4 at East Tennessee State
- Central Arkansas by 1.9 at Abilene Christian
- Idaho by 7.0 over Northern Arizona
- Southern Illinois by 8.4 over Illinois State
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Some highlights from Week 5:
- Movelor nailed the margin on four games, including Central Michigan vs. San Diego State (CMU by 1) and USC vs. Wisconsin (USC by 17) in the FBS.
- Movelor’s biggest miss this week came in the Ivy League, where Cornell beat Yale by 24 points as a 22.5-point Movelor underdog. Other big misses: Tennessee Tech beat Gardner-Webb by 31 as an 11.9-point Movelor underdog, and UConn beat Buffalo by 44 as a 2.1-point Movelor favorite.
- Movelor’s gap behind SP+ is up to 1.3 points. It trails FPI by 1.0. Credit to Bill Connelly, who has SP+ just as accurate as the closing spread so far.
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Overall stats through 614 games:
- FBS vs. FBS: 69.1% correct winners; 14.1-point absolute average error margin
- All FBS: 77.5% correct winners; 13.6-point absolute average error margin
- FCS vs. FCS: 68.9% correct winners; 13.6-point absolute average error margin
- All Division I: 75.1% correct winners; 14.1-point absolute average error margin
