It felt good to write that title again!
If you follow my writings here, or you listen to me on the radio/podcast, you know that I really have a borderline obsession with two aspects of sports betting: awards, and understanding why champions are champions. What makes them win? What makes other teams come up short?
As part of my quest to learn the answers to those questions, I like to try to create a statistical “box,” so to speak, using the profiles of past champions, and then evaluate how closely the teams this year in that sport fit into that box. Sure, teams are always going to be a little different, a little unique, but a lot of them have the same (sometimes all the same) characteristics.
Enter the “Stoplight” graphic, which was actually quite successful last year at identifying teams that would win championships in their given sport. Typically what happens is, entering the playoffs, a group of teams will have no warts, no things that are outside the “box” of all past champions and their characteristics. The graphic measures how teams this year measure up to past champions.
And usually I will bet on 1 or 2 of those teams (there might be 2-3 that fit, there might be a dozen) and what invariably happens is my team loses in devastating fashion while another team on the list wins. It’s been a really fun year for this dynamic! A few highlights, just since March:
2023 NCAA Tournament - Just 3 teams “fit” entering the tourney — UCLA, Houston, and Connecticut. I bet UCLA. They got even more injured than they were before, lost an all-timer to Gonzaga, and meanwhile UCONN went 900-0 against the spread and crushed everyone. Again, not the fault of the Stoplight graphic, UCONN fit! I could have bet both. I just make bad choices sometimes. Many of you messaged me saying “thank you,” because you bet UCONN after reading the posts, which is even funnier because basically you’re smarter than I am, and I just do the yeoman’s work of creating the graphic.
2023 Stanley Cup Playoffs - 5-6 teams fit, I bet the Rangers, smart bettors in the hockey world told me to avoid Vegas (who also fits in the box) like the plague, and Vegas, of course, won. The lesson as always: never listen to anyone else, unless you are subscribing to their Substack.
2023 College World Series - If memory serves, about 6-8 teams fit (of 64), we bet Florida and Virginia, they both made it all the way through to Omaha, and Florida made the Final, where they lost to LSU (who also fit all parameters). That one was really easy to hedge and still win, but you get the idea. Always the brides maid, never the bride, it seems.
So anyway, this tends to be pretty helpful. It gets the champion a LOT. There are situations where a team is a little off though. In the NFL last year, the Chiefs had one single wart for a team in their preseason criteria (their defense the year before had been REALLY bad in a specific area), but obviously in terms of their performance during the year, they made perfect sense. They also have the best player ever. In the NBA, there were basically zero teams that made PERFECT sense, Milwaukee was the closest, they lost in the first round, and Denver (who again, had one area of weakness but was great everywhere else historically) won the title. So you can see, it won’t always be a perfect fit. But a lot of the time it is, and even when it isn’t, it’s really not far off. At least not yet. And it definitely orders the teams in a way that helps you consider ones that really have a chance.
I’ll explain the nuts and bolts of what you’ll be seeing below in just a second, but I’d also add that if you have ideas for sports you’d like to apply this methodology to, feel free to comment below with them. A longtime follower reached out last year about the College World Series, actually did his own work on it with my occasional help, and it turned into something really fun that did predict the champion (and most other teams that made a deep run). I am actually working on one for Major League Soccer for next month that I’ve never done before. Baseball will be up next week probably, and will be quite the stumper in terms of figuring out who to bet (not sarcastic, it actually has a chance to be an all-time crazy postseason). On that one, as I do sometimes, I’ll include the actual criteria I’ve used, all of it actually. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, depends if I consider it proprietary or not.
Anyway, off we go.