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**InsiderEdge** · 12-06-2004, 04:00 PM

Bowl Season Handicapping Intangibles

The 2004 college bowl season is here and another season of 28 games is about to commence. The regular season and the bowl season are two different animals altogether and they must be handicapped that way. Throughout the regular season, it’s easier to pick out teams weaknesses that will hurt them against their opponent but during bowl season, there are less of these weaknesses since everyone has a minimum of 6 wins and there is much more parity. I will be hitting on some intangibles that need to be looked at when looking at these postseason games.

Strong or Weak Finish

USC and Oklahoma are two of the many teams that finished the season strong but those are obvious. Dig deep and look for some other teams more off the radar that came home strong. Oddmakers often tend to overlook these teams, especially if they are playing a big name opponent that the public is sure to be all over. Syracuse, Cincinnati, Hawaii and Fresno St. are 4 teams that won their way into the post season with very strong finishes. They finished a combined 13-3 in each others final four games so they could still be carrying some momentum heading into their final game. There were six teams that finished the season by losing 3 of their last 4 games or worse. Six wins were necessary to become bowl eligible meaning these six teams must have started the season very strong and fizzled out at the end since five losses would have eliminated them in most cases. These are not automatic go against teams in the bowl games since many other factors need to be looked at but if you are playing on them, do so with caution.

Power Ratings

Take a look at your power ratings and see how the matchups look against each other. These can be very helpful now when playing games outside of the conferences. The highest power rating in our numbers of teams competing in the bowl season is USC while the lowest is Marshall. And a matter of fact, four of the bottom five teams are all from the MAC, showing how weak of a conference it was in terms of schedule strength. Another interesting fact is that there are 6 teams in the top 40 who aren’t even in bowl games – Arkansas, Stanford, Clemson, Oregon, BYU and Kansas. Clemson was eligible but they were not allowed to participate in the postseason because of their altercation with South Carolina. Is Arkansas more deserving of a bowl bid than Hawaii is? I say yes but Hawaii has the better win-loss record which clinched it. Now that everyone is here, the best thing to do it to throw those records right out the window as they mean nothing. Trying to find the more prepared team is much more important and that team could easily have the worst of the two win-loss records.

Turnover Margins

Of the 56 teams currently playing in the postseason, only 13 finished the regular season with a negative turnover margin. Basically, turning the ball over on a consistent basis will prevent most teams from spending the holidays away from home during bowl season. But what does it say about the 13 teams that got in with the negative margin? It can mean their conference has tie ins with more bowls than others do and as long as they had those 6 wins, they got in. On the flip side, it can also show that a team that overcame a negative turnover margin had to do other things much better in order to get into this position. Turnovers are certainly not a good thing but it’s the above average teams that can still win despite losing the turnover battle. Consistency is also another thing that must be looked at as to whether a team is giving the ball up 3 times per game or if it was just one or two games that hurt them. Using the Miami Ohio Redhawks as an example, they finished the season with a -0.75 turnover margin by giving the ball up 29 times and grabbing 20 takeaways. However, 12 of those giveaways came in two games against Marshall and Michigan. They averaged 1.7 giveaways in their other 10 games meaning they would have finished at even had they not had those aberrations. The same analysis needs to be looked at for teams that have a + turnover margin to see if it’s a consistent pattern or just a couple games that is padding the numbers.

Schedule Strength

We touched on this briefly above. Looking at strength of schedule can show a lot and how prepared a team may be heading into their bowl game. The MAC obviously had some quality teams in the conference this season but they had the most unfavorable teams out of any conference in the country. That is the reason the conference is ranked 15th in the nation, finishing below some 1-AA conferences such as the Southland and the Great West. Toledo, Marshall, Miami, Bowling Green and Northern Illinois had some great games against one another this season but will that be enough to prepare them for the postseason? These five teams finished this season 2-8 against BSC Conference teams with both wins coming against Temple (Toledo and Bowling Green). The average score of those 8 losses was 40-19. It’s something to think about. Oregon St. finished the season with the toughest schedule showing their 6-5 record was definitely earned. They played 5 teams currently ranked in the top 25, which ended up being their only 5 losses on the season. Miami Ohio ended up being the bowl team that finished with the easiest schedule. The team that played the tougher schedule does not make them the automatic play however but they might have the edge with more big game experience.

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