NCAA March Madness 2011 Recap

I finished 27-38-2 or 42% against the spread (ATS) -- my first sub-50% performance in 4 years of applying my Gibbs-Gipp system to the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

Over 4 full years from 2008 through 2011, I am 129-125-5 or 50.8%.

I should admit that just by picking favourites in every NCAA tournament game for the past 4 years, you would have finished ahead of me every year and would be sporting a 138-116-5 or 54.25% record for 2008 through 2011.

Lady G vs. President Obama
President Obama picks winners straight-up with no point line for each bracket and round.
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/brackets_2011.pdf

He had a tough time the past two years with none of his final 4 picks coming through. But, when he picked upsets in the early rounds, I could identify games where Lady Godiva and the Baracketer-in-Chief disagreed. In Obama's first 3 years in office, I am 9-19 womano-a-mano against the Baracketer. I won 5-3 in 2009, but the President can boast that he defeated Lady G 6-2 last year and 10-2 this year.

And, speaking of mano-a-womano, kudos to the President for also picking the women's NCAA brackets.

Lady G's System

I myself take no interest whatsoever in American college basketball, but toy boy fiancé Archibald can't get enough roundball. Every year he organizes a friendly, non-profit office pool for the NCAA men's tourney. Instead of picking bracket winners, the object of his pool is to pick winners against the point spread each and every day as the tournament unfolds. The winner of his winner-take-all pool is the contestant who picks the most winners against the spread over 64 matches. All matches are weighted equally starting with the play-in game to determine the 64th team.

To humour Archibald, I participate by relying on economists' studies showing that "heavy" underdogs win more than their fair share of college basketball games against the point spread, while "non-heavy" overdogs win slightly more than 50% (although this particular result is not statistically significant).

http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/print/179073423.html

2011 Super Bowl

Modified 9 February 2011
I am embarrassed to say that I finished 4-7 for the 2011 playoffs and have now lost the past 4 Super Bowls against the point spread. Combining both regular season and playoffs, I finished even-steven at 130-130-7 for the 2010-11 NFL season.

Sports fans like groundhogs have another 6 weeks to hibernate. Then, tune in for my March madness picks when I also match wits against Baracketer-in-Chief Obama.

To see why I picked Pittsburgh to win the Super Bowl, check out Freakonomics author Professor Steven Levitt's case for picking the Super Bowl underdog every year because Super Sunday bettors are less sophisticated than regular season punters and overvalue overdogs even more than regular season bettors.

www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/05sbgamble_92_94_.html

Through 45 Super Bowls to date, underdogs are 21-22-2. Based on Professor Levitt's analysis, I would expect to see underdogs win on points in 54% of Super Bowls over a statistically significant sample of 1,000 Super Bowls or so. We will not live long enough to find out if Professor Levitt is correct. But, it is interesting to keep track of Super Bowl data as the years go by.

Part-time NFL analyst and full-time public policy pundit Gregg Easterbrook http://search.espn.go.com/gregg-easterbrook/ recommended taking all home teams in the quarter-final round of the NFL playoffs based on the 73% winning record straight-up of home teams in the quarter-final round over the full history of NFL playoffs in this format going back to 1990. ESPN blowhard John Kincade calls this advice lazy based on the last several years with home teams only winning 50%. 2-2 this year is too small a sample size to say who is correct on a consistent, long-term basis. We won't know for sure until 1,000 games have been played over the next 200+ years. But, this year Kincaid called it better than Easterbrook.

Condolences to long-suffering Jet fan and former Godiva toy boy Reginald who remains unlucky in all his love affairs -- with football and the ladies.

NFL 2010 Regular Season Recap

My Record

After 49-62-1 the final 7 weeks, I fell to 50.6% winners for the season or 126-123-7. I ran just behind a simple all-underdog strategy going 5-6 with "value overdog" picks. I did not have a winning week after week 10. All in all, rather a disappointing season after a promising start.

I have been participating in a season-long NFL pool picking winners against the point spread since 2001 when my then toy boy Reginald persuaded me that there was no better way for an English lass like me to immerse myself in North American culture. Over the past 10 years, I racked up a 52% winning record beating the pants off long-gone Reginald and most other foolish men who analyze each and every game in mind-numbing detail.

My Approach

It's no accident that my long-term record is right on the money with the 52% historical winning record for a simple all-underdog approach. I pick mostly underdogs leavened by a small selection of what I call "value overdogs". Most years, my approach will place you in the middle of the pack. But, statistical analysis indicates that 1 out of every 6 years on average, I will pick more than 55% of all games correctly (e.g., 141-115 or better). 55% or better should be enough to give you a chance to win a pool prize. If you are a contender once every 6 years, you will be doing well.

CFL 2010 Recap

For the 2nd year running, I correctly picked SASKATCHEWAN to cover over Montreal in the Canadian Football League championship game. Saskatchewan fell to 3-15 in Grey Cups. If there is another professional sports team with a worse record in finals, I can't think who it might be. (Apologies to the prairie family of offical Lady G toy boy and fiance Archibald.)

I finished 7-6 with my "value overdog" picks this year, but am 11-15 over 2 years. For the past 2 seasons as a whole including playoffs, I am 84-70 or 54.5%. A simple all-underdog strategy leads the way at 88-66 or 57.1%. Does anyone out there have any historical data on CFL underdogs?

TORONTO MAYOR RACE

Archibald wants the world to know his prediction that George Smitherman would win the race for Toronto Mayor IF former Deputy Mayor Joey Pants fell to less than 10% of the vote proved to be correct. Archibald prognosticated that if Joey Pants cracked the 10% threshold as indeed he did, high school football coach Rob Ford would be Mayor. Archibald, get your own blog!