Despite the talks of a playoff and rumors of conference realignment, the summer months have brought us a seemingly endless period of no college football news. Suspensions, injuries, and what players eat for breakfast litter the headlines of sports journals everywhere. This summer, I intend to write a few fanposts to help keep us OU fans sane. Most of my posts will involve predictions for next year.

Last year, I tried running a simulation of the entire season to project rankings and bowls. My program eventually started spitting out ridiculous results, so I stopped midway through the season. I’ve been tweaking it ever since and would like to get some feedback on what I’ve done so far.

I’ve graphed the win percentage versus the Vegas point spread for hundreds of games. This has allowed me to determine an equation that would predict a team’s chances of winning a game based solely on the spread. The graph can be seen below:

The problem I have now is how to estimate the spread based only on the rankings of the two teams who are playing. I'm currently thinking about using the following formula: Spread = 0.5(Rank of Team 1 - Rank of Team 2). This would give a spread of 0.5 for teams 1 away from each other and 60 for the number 1 ranked team against an FCS team.

If I can figure out the best way to do this, I can write an effective program that simulates games and predict the chances of teams to go undefeated. What are your thoughts on this?