Legal Commentary

December 22, 2009, Tuesday

4. Las Vegas Bowl, BYU vs. Oregon State, 8:00 pm

In spite of a season opening 14-13 upset win over the Oklahoma Sooners, the BYU early season 3rd game 54-28 blowout loss to Florida State did not help raise the status of the Mountain West Conference, although the game stats were nearly even, as each team punted only once and gained ca. 500 yards total offense, with the Cougars actually gaining more yards per play (8.9 ypp) than the Seminoles (6.6 ypp), but BYU turned the ball over 5 times. The 31-7 loss to TCU was in fact much more devastating in terms of domination. Doubt-provoking was also a late season 24-19 squeaker over then winless New Mexico.

Oregon State fields a very strong team who's worst loss of the season was to unbeaten Cincinnati 28-18 early in the season, with close losses to Arizona, USC and Oregon, as the Beavers came within a gnawed log of going to the Rose Bowl, losing the "Civil War for the Roses" to Oregon 37-33, rightfully so in our opinion, as the Ducks are surely the better representative, with a lone conference loss to Stanford and one out of conference loss to Boise State.

Our call: The betting line favors Oregon State by 2.5 points. YPPSYS ranks BYU 15th (rating .02) and Oregon State 33rd (rating -0.6) which gives Brigham Young University a 0.8 rating advantage and 0.8 x 9 = 7.2 points on the scoreboard. YPPSYS II gives BYU an 8.6 MOV schedule-adjusted rating as compared to 5.4 for the Beavers, or a one field goal advantage for the Cougars. Both YPPSYS calculations thus favor BYU. We call it 37-34 for BYU.

NCAA FBS College Football Bowl Game Predictions 2009 / 2010 utilize YPPSYS ratings and rankings (yards per play advantage - offense and defense, won-loss record, schedule of difficulty according to Massey Ratings) and YPPSYS II for the top 40 teams (YPPSYS II = YPPSYS I supplemented by MOV, margin of victory plus the schedule difficulty recalculated based on YPPSYS ratings).

YPPSYS COLLEGE FOOTBALL RATINGS AND RANKINGS - NCAA DIVISION I-A (FBS) are based on net yards per play advantage (NAYPPA), strength of schedule, defense and adjustment for losses through December 5, 2009, after Week 14 of regular season games.

NAYPPA = net yards per play advantage (YPP OFF minus YPP DEF)
YPP OFF = net yards per play gained on offense
YPP DEF = net yards per play allowed on defense
Schedule = Schedule difficulty thus far in the season according to Massey Ratings
(SchP=Schedule Partial)
YPP Team Statistics are based on data found at cfbstats.com
Odds are taken from Todd Beck's College Football Prediction Tracker
as of Wednesday, December 16, 2009 9:42:07 AM

The prognostications cover numerous bowl games and great match-ups. Few games can be said to be mis-matched and ultimate winners are in doubt in many.

Full post as published by LawPundit on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).