Re: Dr. Bob -- sharpshooter fallacy?
 

you guys should listen dr. bob describe his method before you blast it. as i understand it, the key thing he does is he refines the "box score" stats that most math-based handicappers use each week. ie if a long snap flies over the punter's head and gives the offense a -30 yard play, he removes that from a team's offensive statistics. that is just an example i came up with now, it was over a year ago that i heard him and i forget the specifics. he spends hours each week going through games in this way. if you go to sportsconferencecall.com and look in the archives, i believe he was on that show last fall.

the guy has won at a 56%-ish clip for almost a decade at college football, and he has a bad start this season, and people are ready to infer there are huge holes in his method, it's pretty silly. i rarely downgrade a handicapper because of his game writeups.... i will upgrade if he is particularly creative or solid, but rating someone based on his writeups can be misleading.

i think the bad(?) writeups and post-oak's completely valid point about week1 plays are weaknesses that comes from having paying customers. also if he is off his game this year (and if he was a bettor would just take time off or bet smaller), that is a weakness for the same reason.

Re: Dr. Bob -- sharpshooter fallacy?
 

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I wonder how much of this "Team X covered at home in 12 of their last 14 following road losses of 7+" is marketing lingo for his squareish clients, who may not understand some of the more technical aspects of his model. If he's using some sort of regression model, I don't see why he'd reveal what's really driving his picks.

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I agree 100%. I don't think he's datamining, I think he re-does that stats and puts them in his model. I just don't think he'll continue to run >58% forever.

One concern would be, if something in the game has changed since he started doing these picks - rules changes, scholarship changes, clock rule modifications -- and he has not adjusted his model for factors that affect the underlying stats and game.

Re: Dr. Bob -- sharpshooter fallacy?
 

IMO, you're on the right track Najdorf. I think scholarship changes are really making a difference. I'm used to hitting a pretty good clip myself as it seems it was easier to find a matchup disadvantage and go with it. Now, there are not the glaring differences and games are coming down to, more often than not, who wins the turnover and big play battle. It's who can create the big turnover. It's who has the guys that can break a punt return or turn a screen pass into 60 yards. Very few teams are the traditional line them up and smack the other team around (Ohio St comes to mind as one who does do it the old way). Lots of my models are based on stuff similar to Dr Bob. I look at ypp a lot. Anymore, I'm not sure it has as much statistical impact as it once did.

anyway, rambling response...but I think the more even teams have created differences in the game where it mainly comes down to play makers.

Re: Dr. Bob -- sharpshooter fallacy?
 

I think if you/anyone just modeled TO margin, red zone %, 3rd and 4th down %, you'd be 90% of the way to a successful model. Obvs in the short-run things like punt TD returns and guys who don't throw INTs throwing 3 screw up a pick, but that's gambling.

In short, I don't think ypp is nearly as important as it used to be.

Re: Dr. Bob -- sharpshooter fallacy?
 

the think is I've down models like that
once ypp is thrown in, all the other things lose their statistical relevance