NFL Futures

Having dispensed my "retirement plan" advice last time with the season win over/unders, it's time to turn to that other part of NFL futures betting with such things as "who will win the NFC?" and "who will win the Super Bowl?" predictions...

To make things a little fun for y'all, this will be an interactive column (complete with homework!)

The main mistakes people make in these types of wagers is:

1) making them
2) overplaying favorites
3) overplaying sentimental choices

Let me show you first how it's done -- here is Tim's take on the NFC:

So first up you can see that the Vegas line gives them a lot of room for error -- a fair bet line would add up to 1.00 (or 100% -- eg if you add together all the odds on each team it equals 100%). Well, in fact they are using a line that is 1.53 meaning there's essentially a 53% rake on the bet -- pretty darn huge! Not many places have the nerve to offer gambling propositions with an expected loss of 53% (lotteries excluded), why I haven't seen odds that bad since my last marriage (oh wait, that's a Norman Chad line).

However, by building your own line that totals 100% you can still compare yours to the Vegas one and get a sense of if there is any value.

Now in my case the only team with seeming value is Tampa Bay, which I have as 8-1 (or a one in nine chance of representing the NFC in the Super Bowl) and Vegas has at 10-1. If my line is reasonably accurate then this would be a worthwhile bet to make. The question is, how much faith do I have in my line?

Well given the perceived edge on Tampa is 11/9 or +22% then I deem it as an unacceptable risk. Here's what Tampa has going for them -- 1) new coach with offensive "genius" reputation (no rip on Dungy, but it was time for a change), 2) existing good defense that should continue to do well, 3) Easy division (if you believe that New Orleans is more like the 2001 team than the 2000 team it's 3 losing record competitors) could lead to home field advantage, 4) have beaten St. Louis (as seen by last year's Monday Night game), 5) have groovy orange uniforms -- oh wait, scratch that.

That however does not seem enough for a bet that can go underwater in week one with a few mishaps to key players. A 22% edge is paltry on such a hard to assess wager.

How about turning then to Tim's AFC Take:

So the AFC futures offer absolutely Zilch for me in terms of value -- there's nothing even close to a good bet!

All right then, what about the actual Big Dance -- the Super Bowl? Rather than go through the same exercise as above I simply speculate on the expected likelihood of an NFC team winning the Super Bowl: I post the number at 55%. Then the handy-dandy tool below recalculates everything and tells me the only teeny weeny bit of space I have for value would again be the Bucs, but at 21/16 expected value (+31%) it's not enough for me to back a team that has never even got to the big game despite all the recent years of annual hype.

Now comes the fun part -- your turn! Attached to this page is a spreadsheet (an evil empire Microsoft Excel file) in which all the teams and actual lines are listed...all you need to do is fill in the yellow cells with your expectation of the team's chances of winning their conference, plus an NFC chance of winning the super bowl and everything blim-blam gets calculated. Look for teams where your line is considerably lower than the actual line and maybe you have a play!

Right click (and "save target as") to download:
NFL Futures Excel Worksheet

Do the homework and email it back to me here for grading and possible inclusion in a Tim's Gang consensus line!