Written by SportsSource Analytics
The Spectrum of High Value CFB Head Coaches
One of the underrated aspects of assessing line value in the betting market is a coach’s performance history. SportsSource Analytics started its company based on the fact there were no data sets, let alone analytical platforms, helpful in grading coaching performance.
Why is coach analysis so important?
College Football has high player turnover and plenty of movement on the sidelines year after year. The carousel is even more magnified now with over 15% of FBS players entering the Transfer Portal within the past 12 months. When it comes to coaches (while plenty change the logo on their polo’s quite frequent), coaching is generally a small fraternity that accepts a small number of new faces every season.
Place all your football bets this season at Fanduel.com/BetTheBoard and start with a FREE $2,000
Coaching as the college football constant
Coaches are one of the most reliable constants you’ll have in assessing value when it comes to betting, especially during the early portion of the season. For this exercise let’s start simple. We’ve all heard about coaches and how they perform when cast into two different roles; favorites and underdogs. Bettors know the household names that relish an opportunity to keep the pedal down and cover big numbers. Chip Kelly’s Oregon Ducks and Art Briles’ Baylor teams were just a few of the high value cover-machines beloved by bettors week-to-week.
Subscribe to Bet The Board Podcast 🎙
Apple Podcasts: apple.co/3mdGgbz
SoundCloud:
Google Podcasts:
Good Dog
We also know the “Good Underdogs” of years past. Urban Meyer and Barry Alvarez were a combined 38-11 (78%) ATS when catching points! While “Good Underdog” and “Good Favorite” coaches are known in a lot of gambling circles, it’s actually only half the picture analytically speaking. There are diametrically opposed “Bad Underdog” and “Bad Favorite” coaches roaming the sideline every week that very rarely get the proper attention from bettors.
As we get things going for 2021, let’s take a look at the current active coaches by assessing who the outliers are in our four main categories.
At a macro level, there is a lot of signal here. Looking at a micro-level there are even more subsections of value to be gleaned when you dive further into home/away splits and break down spreads into different buckets (double-digit, etc).
Correlation or Causation
One logical question to come out of this discussion; “is this relatively random or is there a common thread or underlying causation for these groups of coaches?” Contrary to popular belief there is a common thread. At SSA, a big part of our business is assessing coaches. In addition to being an analytical platform for College Football, we are also a head coach search firm for athletic directors to help identify the best candidates. We have conducted over 45 FBS head coaching searches in the past 8 years.
While we always take a holistic approach to evaluating program performance under a particular coach, exceeding the expectations (ostensibly covering the spreads) is a very common trait among coaches that are deemed “hot commodities” whenever a job becomes available. It’s not the whole story but it is definitely an objective leading indicator for overall coaching performance. While this can be an inherent trait of many great coaches, it seems to be a consistent struggle for oddsmakers to quantify “coach effect” in these cases. This is compounded by the fact that a lot of great football coaches are not (yet) mainstream like Nick, Dabo, and Ryan you associate with Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State.
Identifying Value
When it comes to value assessment, the coaches and teams in the Good/Bad categories listed above are certainly not the end-all-be-all. It is however a tendency/trend that you want to be familiar with before placing your bets. These coaches (good or bad) tend to hold true to their abilities, which are generally remain static. Coaches are creatures of habit; they are consistent in how they motivate, problem-solve, strategize, and prepare for games in advantage/disadvantage (favorite/underdog) situations. Usually outliers regress to the mean in high parity environments but College Football does not offer parity.
Looking at the big picture
Over the course of the season we’ll dive deeper into the on-field traits and characteristics that correlate to covering the spread for both underdogs and favorites (good and bad). Our data driven process will shed light on what these outlier coaches and teams may have in common providing a great baseline of knowledge to start a more quantitative assessment of value when looking at the CFB slate each week.
