Champion Bracketology: Explaining the Rationale for Staff Prediction Standings

Two weeks ago, as I sat around in the Champion office, waiting for our sports pages to head to the printer, I did what any college student (and sports nerd) would do – wasted time on something incredibly unproductive.

Basically, I made official standings for our Liberty football predictions, mathematical calculations and all.

If you are reading this page, you have likely read and kept up with our weekly staff predictions – an idea sports editor John Nekrasov and I came up with that has turned into a friendly rivalry among our sports reporters – and you have probably seen the basic standings and “last week’s closest” that we post each issue.

Liberty football soared to a 6-0 start to the season, meaning that the seven of us who make our predictions each week – all LU students at heart, regardless of how impartial we may try to be – have done well, with no one worse than 4-2 overall on his predictions.

Therefore, I figured that some tie-breakers will likely need to be calculated to find out who comes out on top at the end of the season. So, when a little bit of free time met my nerdy ambition, a spreadsheet was created.

I began by entering a column for each game in the 2020 season, comparing the actual score of the game with the predictions of the Champion writers and myself.

After consulting with John, we decided to break down the actual score and predicted score into two categories: points difference and spread difference.

Points difference is calculated by finding the difference in points predicted for each team individually, compared to the actual amount scored by each team individually. This is the method we use to calculate the “last week’s closest.”

For example, for Liberty’s game against Western Kentucky, John Simmons earned the closest prediction by forecasting a score of  28-14. Liberty actually won by a score of 30-24, so he was two points (30 minus 28) off of the LU score and 10 (24 minus 14) away from the WKU score, totaling a points difference of 12 for his overall prediction.

Spread difference (as John and I define it), on the other hand, is less about guessing the exact score and more about guessing which team will win by the correct points margin in a given game. To calculate spread difference, we take the margin predicted for the Flames to win or lose and find the difference with the actual margin of victory in the game.

Going back to John Simmons’ prediction from the WKU game, that was a prime example of the difference between points and spread difference. While John was the closest according to points difference, he was only in the middle of the pack in spread difference because his prediction was a 14-point Flames win (28-14), while LU actually won by only six points (30-24) – an 8-point spread difference in total.

In conclusion, here is the order of credentials that will be used to find a winner:

1. Most number of correct selections

2. Lowest total spread difference

3. Lowest total points difference

4. Most times closest to actual score (based on points difference)

5. Most number of exact correct predictions

That’s a lot of tie breakers for a silly office challenge, but we like to have some serious fun here at the Liberty Champion sports section.

Here’s to five more predictions this season (and hopefully five more wins for LU).

See the Liberty Champion official website (www.liberty.edu/Champion) every Friday to see the Champion sports section’s predictions and analysis for that Saturday’s game.

Christian Weaner is the Asst. Sports Editor. Follow him on Twitter at @christianweaner.