Making better football bets with PhD level analytics
You want to win at sports betting. It’s 2022, and legalization in the United States has opened up massive opportunities. In many states, betting is as simple as opening a smart phone app.
However, it’s hard to win at football. NFL spreads are widely considered the hardest market to beat because of massive liquidity. College football is not that much easier.
You’re fighting an uphill battle against sports books. Since they require $110 to win $100, you can’t just win more than half of your bets. Instead, you need a win rate of at least 52.4% in the sharpest of markets.
In this uphill battle, you can’t just wait for lukewarm water to separate into hot and cold. Predictive analytics is a crucial component of winning football betting, and The Power Rank provides top flight numbers.
As someone who studies football for a living, it’s extremely valuable to have other people in the industry who you can trust and bounce ideas off of. Ed’s analysis is one of the first I go to on a week-to-week basis, and should be one of yours as well.
— Dr. Eric Eager, Head of Research and Development at PFF
I first heard about the The Power Rank on one of Gill Alexander’s podcasts. Gill said Ed was one of the few people he trusted that made money in the analytics business besides Rufus Peabody.
Ed releases great member numbers for college football and the NFL. For under $100 annually this is the best bargain in the industry in my opinion.
— Member of The Power Rank from Georgia.
To become a member of The Power Rank, click here.
From academia to football analytics
Hi, my name is Ed Feng. I’m the founder of The Power Rank, a company that believes predictive analytics is a crucial component of winning sports betting.
While I’ve been a crazy fan my entire life, I never expected to work in the sports world. After getting my PhD from Stanford in chemical engineering, I was one of many in search of an academic job.
That changed in 2008. I was reading the paper on Google’s PageRank algorithm and realized all of its similarities with my research. This inspired me to develop a new method for ranking teams.
I worked out some NFL rankings and sent an email to my friends. Enough of them were intrigued for me to explore other sports. It became an obsession, and I found a way to make The Power Rank my job.
In March of 2012, SB Nation made a video of my March Madness analytics. In January of 2013, I accurately predicted Alabama would beat Notre Dame on the cover of Sports Illustrated. They called me their analytics expert.
Since then, my numbers and content have appeared in a wide range of media outlets.
In addition, the ideas in my Amazon best selling book How to Win Your NCAA Tournament Pool have helped many people win their March Madness pool.
To become a member of The Power Rank and get all my best analytics, click here.
How to make football predictions
I want to tell you about the membership product that gives you access to my best football predictions. But first, let’s take a look under the hood at the engine that drives these analytics.
The foundation of my football analytics is accurate adjustments for strength of schedule. This started when I developed a ranking algorithm based on my PhD research at Stanford.
Let’s look at how my algorithm ranks NFL teams on offense and defense based on success rate, a powerful efficiency metric. In my methods, a play is a success if it obtains 50% of the necessary yards on 1st down, 70% on 2nd down, and 100% on 3rd and 4th down.
- The algorithm gets the play by play data from every NFL game. While this includes up to 272 games for an NFL regular season, it can be thousands in college football.
- It creates a network in which the offense and defense of each team are nodes and games are edges that connect the nodes. This was inspired by Google’s PageRank method, which brought order and insight to the complex world of web search.
- From this network, the method develops a set of equations to be solved. For the NFL, there are 64 equations (two for each team) with 64 unknown variables.
- The algorithm solves for the 64 variables simultaneously. This is the key to accurately accounting for strength of schedule. Many other ranking systems do not do this.
- Finally, the variable for each unit (offense or defense) is transformed into a rating that gives an expected success rate against an average team.
Every morning after an NFL or college game, my MacBook Air crunches the numbers. The resulting rankings allow me to make predictions for point spreads and totals.
Analytics experts such as Bill Connelly of ESPN trust my work.
Accuracy of the predictions
Members of The Power Rank have access to my best computer predictions for the NFL and college football.
College basketball spreads
The 2021 season was the first one in which I posted spread predictions from the first day of the season. These predictions appear the day before games, so it’s useful to look at accuracy against both the opening and closing market as tracked by KO Stats.
Here are the results for November, 2021, and the against the spread percentage only considers games in which the prediction differs from the market by more than a half point.
- Opening market: 51.0% (401-386 with 16 pushes)
- Closing market: 50.4% (425-419 with 20 pushes)
During this month, the root mean squared (rms) error of the prediction was 12.02 points. The opening market had a rms error of 11.97, so the predictions were within 0.5% of the opening market.
The closing market had a rms error of 11.85 points, so the predictions were within 1.5% of the closing market.
For the 2022 season through November 30, 2022, this is how the college basketball predictions have performed against the closing spread for Caesars sports book as tracked by the Action Network:
- 50.0% (462-462 with 5 pushes)
- An rms error within 1.65% of the closing market
Football spreads
For college football, the member prediction have gone 73.4% (524-190) in predicting the winners of games straight up. The closing market as tracked by KO STATS has gone 72.4% (517-197).
Here are the results against the opening market as tracked by KO STATS. This only includes games in which the prediction differs from the market by more than a half point.
- 2022: 50.2% (305-302 with 13 pushes), rms error within 0.85% of the market through week 13.
- 2021: 51.3% (347-330 with 7 pushes), rms error within 0.7% of the market.
However, it is getting tough to beat the market later in the week, as here are the results against the market at close.
- 2022: 48.5% (298-316 with 11 pushes), rms error within 1.2% of the markets through week 13.
- 2021: 47.4% (315-349 with 10 pushes), rms error within 1.7% of the markets.
- 2020: 53.7% (248-214 with 11 pushes), rms error within 1.4% of the markets.
It is important to use this model early in the week for college football for betting against spreads. I post college football predictions by Sunday evening at the latest.
From the 2019 through 2021 seasons, the NFL predictions have gone 52.8% against the closing market spread (307-274 with 12 pushes). This only includes games in which the prediction differs from the closing spread by more than a point.
During this three season period, the root mean square error (rms) of the NFL predictions has been 13.19 compared to 13.09 for the closing markets. My predictions have been within 0.8% of the markets.
In addition, these numbers have predicted the winner straight up in 65.3% of games (534-284), compared to 64.4% (527-291) for the markets. There have been three ties during these three seasons.
In 2022, the NFL predictions are 58-66 with 5 pushes through week 12. This poor record is mostly likely due to small sample size, given the strong track record over the previous three seasons. Since the model switched over the version that uses my algorithms that adjust for schedule strength in week 4, the NFL predictions are 47-47 with 3 pushes
In predicting game winners straight up, The Power Rank predictions are 62.0% (111-68), a better record than the closing markets (60.3%, 108-71).
Football totals
Here are the results for my totals predictions in 2022.
- College football totals from week 5 through 13: 53.9% (242-207 with 3 pushes), rms error within 0.3% of the opening market.
- NFL totals from week 5 through 12: 47.6% (49-54 with 2 pushes), rms error within 2.3% of the closing market.
When I started betting football seriously, I quickly found that data and analytics is essential to being a consistent winner.
What I like so much about The Power Rank is that it not only provides excellent rankings and predictions, but also adjusted numbers for “real” football stats like Yards Per Play and Success Rate.
Having “real” football stats adjusted for strength of schedule helps me recognize and exploit inefficiencies in the betting markets.
Jordan Jones, member of The Power Rank
Be smart
I do not recommend making bets based only on The Power Rank’s predictions. While these numbers serve as an objective baseline, winning football betting also involves understanding other factors.
- Market movement. Looking at how a point spread moves before the market closes gives you information on the opinion of sharp sports bettors. This critical information should inform future bets.
- Context of teams. There is always some error in the predictive analytics, and understanding the ceiling and floor of a team can make for better predictions. For example, a team with a Hall of Fame QB like Tom Brady has a high ceiling for the pass offense, so less than stellar numbers might underestimate future performance.
- Injuries and situations. An injury to the quarterback almost always matters, and a team coming off a bye week has an edge over a team that played the past week.
In my weekly analysis for members during football season, I highlight these factors.
A membership to The Power Rank does not offer picks on football games. Instead, members get spread and total predictions on games and other analytics to help you make better decisions.
I spent a long time searching the web for analytics rather than picks. I finally found it with The Power Rank.
I signed up for the power rating and point spread analysis for football and am quite pleased with the offerings.
I need to have consistent line anticipation/prediction through objective reasoning to begin my weekly evaluation. Your site offers such reasoning on an excellent basis.
You provide an excellent foundation for determining the correct line. This assists me greatly with establishing my betting line for the week, and I’m able to adjust my line for non-objective factors knowing that objective factors have been taken into account.
I would recommend a membership to anyone in search of strong analytical reasoning and objective line determination.
— Jeff, Las Vegas, Nevada.
Become a member of The Power Rank
When you come in and bet me, believe me, I’m going to move the hell out of those numbers.
Chris Andrews, director of the South Point sports book on The Football Analytics Show
As a member of The Power Rank, you get the following:
- World Cup predictions and bracket advice
- Predictions for the spread in every NFL and college football game.
- Weekly member analysis during football season that breaks down games based on The Power Rank’s analytics.
- Predictions for the spread in every college basketball game.
- Data files with rankings for college football and NFL teams based on metrics such as success rate and yards per play. You can upload these files to a spreadsheet to perform your own analysis.
- My full bracket advice for the NCAA tournament.
The March Madness bracket advice has helped many members win their pool.
Thanks to The Power Rank, I won my pool in 2019. I had Virginia winning.
Guess how many games I’ve watched this season? Literally zero. I only used the cheat sheet you provide through my membership to The Power Rank.
I had guys in my pool that have watched college basketball for decades, and I beat them all.
— Mark Carvalho, member of The Power Rank
All football predictions are posted by Tuesday at noon Eastern at the very latest during the football season. In 2022, the college football predictions are posted on Sundays, and an email gets sent to members.
It starts with an algorithm I’ve developed that does for sports analytics what Google’s PageRank did for web search: brings order and insight into a messy system. This algorithm leads to NFL predictive analytics that have gone 52.9% against the spread from 2019-2021.
A membership to The Power Rank is neither a handicapping service that provides picks or a get rich quick program. If you want either of these things, please save us both time and do not become a member.
Instead, you might be interested in the process behind making football bets. With the importance of predictive analytics, you might want to outsource these calculations to an expert for less than $5 a week.
The Power Rank’s predictive analytics help you make better decisions on bets. They might convince you to make a bet here or talk you out of a bet there.
Not every decision will work out in your favor. However, let’s suppose a few more decisions work for you than against you. Even with a $25 bet size, this makes a membership well worth it.
To become a member of The Power Rank for $99 per year and get instant access to the PhD level predictive analytics and premium content, click on the orange “Add To Cart” button.
This membership renews every year. You can cancel anytime.
30 day, no hassle, money back guarantee
Please take up to 30 days to evaluate any of the predictions and analytics of a membership to The Power Rank. If you’re not satisfied for any reason, I will refund your money.
No questions asked, no hard feelings.
Simply reply to the email you’ll get when you purchase. I will personally take care of the rest.