Here we go with what used to be one of our favorite exercises. We’re all about confidence pools because they reward being able to differentiate strong picks from weak ones. But after a couple of stellar years in the Solid Verbal contest we got housed last year in a small pool of analytics folks. We’re hoping for a little redemption.
Market lines are Vegas Insider consensus as of ~1 hour ago. As usual we blend the Massey-Peabody implied line with the market to get a “true line”. The right blend is tough question because historically we do better than the market on bowls, and better than regular season. But those games are only about 5% of our data so we don’t want to over-react. We settled on a very scientific 50/50.
We make minimal adjustments for players sitting out the game, and of course no adjustment for “want to be there”. Our player adjustments are only for QBs, but presumably we get some of that regressing to the market.
Have fun with it, and good luck. Happy holidays to you guys.