For Super Bowl LIII in toy boy fiance Archibald's fun pool, I was wrong with my pick of
LA RAMS +2.5 over ne cheatriots
Freakonomics Professor Steven Leavitt recommends the Super Bowl underdog as the best bet in sports. So far after LIII Super Bowls, underdogs are leading against the spread (ATS) XXVI-XXV-II.
Lady Godiva finally enjoyed a successful play-offs at 8-3 ATS after picking all home overdogs (3-1) in the divisional 1/4 final round and all road underdogs (5-1) in the wild card and conference champ rounds. This was only my 2nd winning play-off year in the past 16.
The divisional round is the only week of the year when I take all home overdogs. Tuesday Morning Quarterback Gregg Easterbrook points out that the top 2 seeds have won almost 3/4 of play-off matches straight-up after the bye week going back to 1990 -- well above the usual 2/3 straight-up winning rate for overdogs. Over 250 years and 1,000 matches, I would expect home teams in a play-off match after a bye week to finish above 50% ATS by a statistically significant margin.
After 17 weeks of regular season action, I finished 132-118-6 = 86-74-4 road underdogs, 41-38-1 home underdogs, 1-1-1 road favourite overdogs and 4-5 home favourite overdogs. (Over the last several years, I have had an unfortunate knack for picking overdog losers.)
I finished behind a simple all-underdog strategy, which racked up a 21st winning regular season in the past 27 years. If anyone out there has ATS data for regular seasons prior to 1992, please provide said data in a comment or let me know where NFL regular season ATS pre-1992 data might be available on the inter-web.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment