038: 🏈 opponent win totals app
A tiny app to look up a team's schedule and the win totals of its opponents.
Happy July.
The first college football game of the 2023 season is 46 days away. As the season approaches, every fan base tries to forecast the record of its team.
One way to get a sense of expectations is to use the pre-season win totals from different sportbooks. For example, North Carolina’s win total is 8.5.
Vegas projects a likely 8-4 record.
But what about the win totals of Carolina’s opponents?
Or its non-conference opponents? And its ACC opponents?
I wrote a little app that tries to answer those questions.
Select a team to find its . . .
game schedule by week
whether the game is in conference or not (using icons)
the location: home, road, or neutral (using icons)
the opponent
the projected win total for each opponent
Once the team is selected, the title of the chart shows the team’s win total. Plus, the subtitle of the chart prints out the average win total of . . .
the team’s opponents
its non-conference opponents
and its conference opponents
For example, did you know the average win total of Louisville’s ACC opponents is 5.7? And for Duke, the average win total of its league opponents is 7.3?
This information can be useful when trying to project the season.
Check out the app below and let me know what you think:
The goal of the app is to provide useful information when gauging a team’s expectations entering the season. It’s easiest to use on a desktop or larger screen.
The win totals are from vegasinsider.com. These are composite values, so not from one particular book. No odds are listed. If you’re trying to use this information to make a future bet, I recommend you shop the lines and consider how the totals are being bet by the market.
This app is built on top of cfbfastR and collegefootballdata.com. The logos are generated using cfbplotR.
If you find it useful, please consider sharing it.
You can find an example of the code to generate a table like in the app. It’s a function to look up a team, find its schedule, and generate the opponents win totals.
If you spot an error or have a question, feel free to drop me a line. Next week, I’ll try to use this data and share anything that jumps out for the ACC and other leagues.