The start of the 2023 Michigan State football season was a bit quiet. The Spartan offense was a bit flat. New starting quarterback Noah Kim struggled to move the ball. On defense, Central Michigan drove the ball into the red zone on the Chippewas' opening possession and very nearly scored a touchdown. This caused the opening night crowd in Spartan Stadium to be rather quiet as well.
But slowly, the intensity began to increase. As half time drew near, the Spartan ensemble seemed more finely tuned. The plays from both the offense and defense grew louder. By the middle of the third quarter, the Spartans were rockin'. The game reached its crescendo when sophomore Tyrell Henry made a one-handed grab in the north endzone to extend the Michigan State lead to 24-7.
By the time the game had reached its finale, Michigan State extended the lead to 31-7. A night that could have turned into an elegy instead ended with the Spartan joyously singing "Victory for MSU" in the southeast corner of the endzone with those who remained from the student section.
It was certainly not a flawless performance from the Spartans. There were some sour notes here and there. I personally would have liked to see a more dominant performance by the offensive line. Central Michigan also did not possess a passing attack that could adequately test the Michigan State secondary.
That said, in the later stanzas of the game, we did see some harmony between Noah Kim and the young receiving corps. The defensive front made some loud plays, and special teams was a pleasant surprise. The 47-yard field goal make by Jonathan Kim was music to the ears of the Spartan faithful.
The question now is whether the Spartans can build on the results on the performances in Week One? Will the season continue to build to an exciting climax, or will it peak early and descend into a quiet and mournful dirge? The book is still unwritten.
Week One Results
For those who are unfamiliar with the way I structure this series, here is a quick primer. Every week during the college football season I will present my computer's recommended wages in my Bad Betting Advice column. Following the week's action, I will review those picks here and provide some comments on the action across the country.
One figure that I prepare is a comparison of the outcome of each game relative to the opening point spread. That result for Week One of 2023 is shown below in Figure 1.
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| Figure 1: Results of Week One showing the actual point differentials relative to the opening spread. |
Each data point represents one game. The position of the data point either above or below the solid diagonal line reveals whether the favored team beat the opening spread or not. The farther a data point is from the center diagonal, the bigger the deviation from the spread.
The two diagonal lines represent one standard deviation from the mean (the opening spread) which is equal to just over 14 points. In other words, in roughly one-third of all football games, the final point differential is two touchdowns away from the opening spread. Favored teams whose data point falls outside of the dotted line either overachieved or underachieved by a significant margin.
Some favored teams underachieve so much that the game ends in an upset. These games are located below the red horizontal line.
This week Figure 1 tells us that California, Miami of Florida, Washington, Central Florida, USC, and Oklahoma (off scale and not shown) all played the sweet tune of overachievement. In contrast, there were eight favorites who underachieved so badly they were singing the upset blues. Those teams include Baylor, Clemson, TCU, Texas Tech, and Purdue.
In my Bad Betting Advice weekly preview, I highlighted several potentially interesting bets against the money line (upsets), against the spread (ATS), and against the total points (over/under). Now it is time to see how those predictions turned out, starting with the upsets in Table 1.
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| Table 1: Upsets in Week One based on the opening Vegas line compared to the upset projections from last week. |
Both computers (i.e. my computer and ESPN's FPI model) kept a bit quiet in Week One and each only made one upset prediction. Both turned out to be wrong. There were a total of eight upsets in Week One which was just above the prediction of 6.8 from my weekly simulation.
What is notable is that five of the upsets this week were in games where the point spread was over 10 points (including losses by Texas Tech, Clemson, and Boston College) and two other upsets had point spreads over 20 points (Texas State over Baylor and Colorado over TCU). History tells us that there are typically only one-or-two 25-point or worse upsets per season. It is possible that Texas State has already claimed the biggest upset of the year.
Table 2 below summarizes the results of the recommended picks against the spread.
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My computer only had one recommended pick for the week, which did not occur (thanks for nothing, Hawkeyes) but the FPI was bolder with eight total picks. Unfortunately for the ESPN model, the FPI only had one pick correct to go 1-7 (12.5%) for the week.
When the against-the-spread picks for all 45 games are considered, my model had a strong 25-20 record (56%), while the FPI struggled at 21-24 (47%).
Finally, Table 3 shows the results of my recommended point total bets.
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In my weekly preview, I was cautious about the number of picks my computer made in Week One, especially with the changes in the running clock rule, which could impact my calculations. However, my point total picks had a very strong performance. My standard recommended picks went 15-9 (63%) while my "lock" picks were an impressive 4-1 (80%).
Only time will tell if the accuracy of these picks will get louder or softer as the weeks go by.
Updated Big Ten Odds
After a single week of play, we know only slightly more about each team than we did back in the summer. I fed the results of Week One into my computer in order to generate updated expected win totals, win distribution, and odds for various full season outcomes, as summarized in Tables 4 and 5 for the Big Ten conference.
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| Table 4: Updated Big Ten odds after Week One. The change in rankings and odds from the preseason are shown in parenthesis. The strength of schedule data are noted with the updated national ranking in parenthesis. |
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| Table 5: Updated Big Ten win distribution table after the results of Week One. |
Purdue was the only Big Ten team to pick up an upset loss this week (to Fresno State), but as Figure 1 above shows, several of the Big Ten contenders failed to cover the opening spread. Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota all won, but by a smaller margin than expected. The only Big Ten teams which won and covered were Penn State, Michigan State, and Rutgers.
Despite these results, my computer was still impressed with Ohio State allowing just three points on the road at Indiana. Conversely, my computer was a little less impressed with Penn State and Michigan. As a result, Ohio State now has 40% chance to win the Big Ten East, with Michigan (32%) and Penn State (21%) still very much in the race.
My computer was less than impressed with every team in the Big Ten West. Wisconsin is holding steady with a 40% chance to win the division. Despite the narrow win over Nebraska on a last-second field goal, the odds for Minnesota to win the West ticked up to 19%, just ahead of Iowa at 18%. The odds for the Illini to win the West ticked up slightly to 13%.
While most of the conference was trending down in expected wins, there were two schools that added at least 1.0 game after Week One: Rutgers (+2.0), following the Scarlet Knights' decisive win over Northwestern, and Michigan State (+1.0).
Michigan States's Odds and Remaining Schedule
As the data above shows, the Spartans' win over Central Michigan resulted in a 17-place jump in my computer's power ranking from No. 48 up to No. 31. In addition, Michigan State's expected win total has jumped up to 6.47. My calculations now give Michigan State a 69% chance to become bowl eligible.
Ironically, the results of Week One also suggest that the Spartans' schedule overall is now slightly harder than the math suggested a week ago. A borderline top-25 team now would be expected to win only 6.97 games with the Spartans' schedule, down from 7.31 wins in the preseason. My calculations now rank Michigan State's schedule as the third most difficult in the nation.
Figure 2 below gives my computer's updated projections for the point spreads and victory odds for the Spartans' remaining 11 games. As a reference, the projected odds from my preseason calculations are shown in Figure 2 as a reference.
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| Figure 2: Updated odds and spread projections for Michigan State's remaining games, following Week One and based on a 50,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation. The odds calculated in the preseason are shown as a reference. |
Figure 2 helps to explain why the total number of expected wins for Michigan State has increased. The increase in the Spartans' power rankings has increased the odds for every remaining game.
Michigan State still projects to be a significant underdog in the games against Washington (-7), Michigan (-8.5), at Ohio State (-13), and versus Penn State (-6.5) but the Spartans were projected to be double-digit underdogs in these games just a week ago.
The two Big Ten West road games at Iowa (-1) and at Minnesota (-1) are now close to a toss-up. In addition, the games versus Maryland (+4) and at Indiana (+8) both look more winnable. The projected point spread for the home game against Nebraska (+4.5) has held steady.
The only game on the schedule that looks more challenging now than it did a week ago is the road game at Rutgers (-0.5) following the bye week in October. My computer now projects Michigan State to be a slight underdog against Rutgers, which ironically has pushed the Spartans' projected record from 6-6 to 5-7 despite the increase in expected wins.
However, the Scarlet Knights' win over Northwestern may be overvalued by my machine due to the difficulty properly ranking Northwestern due to the unexpected roster and coaching changes over the summer. I expect this projected line to flip back to the Spartans as soon as next week.
National Overview
In today's outro, let's take a quick look at the notable action around the country in Week One. In each case, the updated odds for each conference can be viewed by clicking on the conference name.
In SEC action, conference members lost in the three most notable non-conference contests as South Carolina lost to North Carolina, Utah beat Florida, and Florida State ran away from LSU. The rest of the conference members beat up on (mostly) Group of Five or FCS teams.
In general, the two division races are unchanged. Georgia (38%) and Tennessee (37%) are heavy favorites in the East while Alabama (42%) increased the lead in the West. The main difference is that Ole Miss (21%) has now passed LSU (13%) for the second-best odds in the SEC West.
The season started on a sour note in the Big 12. Of the nine conference teams who faced FBS-level opponents, three of them were upset as double-digit favorites (see above) and West Virginia lost by 23 points at Penn State. Oklahoma, Houston, and Central Florida were the only teams which covered the spread. As a result, Oklahoma (56%) and Kansas State (54%) now own the best odds to make the conference championship game with Texas (33%) currently in third place.
The members of the Pac-12 were singing a completely different tune last weekend, as all 12 teams won, including Colorado's startling win over a ranked TCU club. In fact, UCLA was the only team that failed to cover the spread, as the Bruins (-14.5) beat Coastal Carolina by only 14 points. It is still very early, but my computer now projects a brutal Pac-12 race where Washington (49%), Utah (36%), Oregon State (32%), USC (29%), Oregon (21%), and UCLA (14%) will all battle for the top two spots and a shot at the Pac-12 title.
It was a mixed bag in ACC action this weekend, as Virginia was blown out by Tennessee, Northern Illinoi upset Boston College, and preseason conference co-favorite Clemson was bedeviled by Duke. On the other side of the coin, Florida State had the most impressive win of the season so far by beating LSU by 21 points. The Seminoles (65%) now have the best odds to advance to the ACC Conference Championship with Duke (41%), Miami (29%), and North Carolina (26%) as the most likely challengers.
Finally, in Group of Five action, Fresno State, Wyoming, Northern Illinois, and Texas State all scored upset wins over Power Five teams to put themselves in the conservation as New Year's Six candidates. Toledo played tough at Illinois before losing by two points, and Tulane defeated South Alabama by 20. When the dust settled on Monday night, my computer gave Tulane (26%), Fresno State (14%), and Toledo (8%) the best odds to earn a spot in a New Year's Six Bowl.
Against all odds, we have reached the finale. As always, enjoy the games.
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