Super Bowl Betting: The Wall Street Journal Pick
Added on Feb 05, 2011 by Jack Thurman in
2 Comments
For the most part, you should completely ignore any analysis, prediction or ‘picks’ from the mainstream media–including the sports media–and especially for betting purposes. Every idiot has an opinion on the Super Bowl, and the fact that they have a column on a sports website or in a newspaper doesn’t negate the fact that they know little, if anything, about how to analyze a football game for betting purposes. So you’ll hear a lot of tripe about how “this is Aaron Rodgers year” or that “Big Ben has been here before” that is essentially–in the words of the legendary James Brown–”talking loud and saying nothing”. One of the few exceptions is a media outlet that you might not immediately think about for top notch sports coverage–The Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper known as ‘the daily diary of the American Dream’ is best known for its coverage of financial markets, but its also the best kept secret for high quality sports analysis. What the newspaper lacks in breadth of coverage it more than makes up for in depth and quality. In particular, their frequent articles that provide a statistical analysis of individual sports are extremely valuable and often provide useful betting insights. For that reason, I’m inclined to pay attention to their Super Bowl betting pick and accompanying analysis. For this NFL season, the WSJ Sports people created a statistical model to “estimate how teams perform in nearly every possible play and how frequently those plays occur in a game. This will help us predict who will win and also let us explain why things happen the way they do.” Their record on the season is solid–28-16 SU during the regular season including 7-3 SU in the playoffs.
We’ll have our ‘official’ side and total selection up later today, so I’m not going to say if I agree with their conclusions but I do respect their analysis. The WSJ Statistical Model Super Bowl Prediction calls for a 24-21 Pittsburgh Steelers’ victory. The entire article is well worth reading but here’s some highlights of their analysis:
The Packers and Steelers both rank in the top-five in the NFL in sacks, interceptions, yards allowed-per-attempt and touchdowns allowed. Yet they achieve their defensive dominance in different ways. The Packers rely on getting to the quarterback quickly (allowing opposing QBs only 2.3 seconds per attempt) and disrupting the throw. But they are less effective when they’re overly concerned about the opposition’s run game, yielding more than six yards per pass attempt on first down. Meanwhile, the Steelers allow opposing QBs a little bit more time (2.5 seconds per attempt), but are suffocating in their coverage, keeping opposing teams from getting anything started by allowing only 5.2 yards per pass attempt on first down.
Good stuff, and important stuff–not ‘rah rah’ nonsense or cliched catch phrases about who is a ‘big game player’ or who ‘wants this game more’. Just solid data with intelligent interpretation. Now, reasonable people can disagree with the conclusions they draw (and to some extent I do here) but you’ve got to give them props for the quality of their work. The Wall Street Journal has long been one of my ‘secret weapons’ as a handicapper and you’ll pay for the cost of a subscription and then some with the money you make from their insights. There’s always a lot of interesting stuff to read about non-sport topics as well.
2 Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.
February 5, 9:15 pm
WSJ accurately picked the surprising Jets playoff run last year. Jason Gay is an entertaining writer. They definitely offer more on sports with less space than most if not all other newspapers.
February 5, 10:45 pm
Obviously I approach things from a handicapping perspective and I’m always amazed at how much ‘mission critical’ information I pick up from the WSJ. Perfect example–before last year’s World Cup everyone was making a big deal about the Adidas ball they were using and predicting that there would be a rash of goals. The WSJ did an analysis that debunked this completely.