2024 Week One Recap: Friday Night Live!

"Is this mic on?"

"Live from East Lansing, it's Friday night!"

The wait is finally over. The Jonathan Smith Era of Michigan State football has finally arrived. But much like some other programs of note, things did not get off to as smooth of a start as hoped. 

The Spartans did eke out a 16-10 victory over the Owls of Florida Atlantic. The defense did look a lot better than expected. They forced a safety, only gave up one touchdown, and forced a turnover on downs in each of Florida Atlantic's final three possessions.

At the risk of being a Debbie Downer, the performance of the offense was underwhelming, and the team committed far too many penalties and other pratfalls. On balance, some might conclude the a lot of the players are not yet ready for prime time. If was enough to give some brothers the blues.

But, just because the first game or even the first season of something does not go as well is not a guarantee that it will not be a success in the long run. Sometimes it simply takes some time for the ensemble to hit its stride. 

The current Michigan State team is young, has a lot of new faces, a new coaching staff, and a new scheme on both sides of the ball. A few hiccups are to be expected. From what I saw live on Friday night, most if not all of errors are correctable.

At the end of the day, winning ugly is better than losing pretty. It is best to have patience and to give Coach Smith and company and players like Aidan Chiles time to grow into their new roles. This first season is likely to have its ups and downs, but there is still a chance that the current cast of characters contains a few stars.

So don't get all verklempt, Spartan fans, the Smith era is just getting started.

Week One Betting 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 provide an update for the weekend's result along with 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 2024 is shown below in Figure 1.

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 college 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 (over one standard deviation).

A total of six teams are in the overachiever category in Week One: Alabama, Texas, Georgia, Miami, Arizona, and perhaps unfortunately, the Spartans' next opponent, Maryland.

No team finished in the underachievement category, yet still won, although UCLA's three-point win at Hawaii (+17) and South Carolina's four-point win over Old Dominion (+17) barely missed the cut.

Most teams that underachieve by more than 14 points wind up taking an upset loss. In Week One, a total of nine teams were bitten by the upset bug. Table 1 below summarizes those nine games and compares these results to the upset picks made last week.

Table 1: Upsets in Week One based on the opening Vegas line compared to the upset projections from last week.

A majority of the upset picks in Week One involved only Group of Five teams, including the two biggest upsets of the weekend: Nevada over Troy (-15.5) and Sam Houston State over Rice (-12.5).

The biggest surprise of weekend in the Power Four was Vanderbilt's (+12) upset win over Virginia Tech, which was a team that some people even projected to be a dark horse playoff contender.

The computer systems both had a great start to the season. My algorithm went two-for-two, correctly predicting mild upset wins by both Notre Dame and Eastern Michigan. ESPN's Football Power Index went 2-1 in Week One and correctly foresaw North Carolina getting the win at Minnesota.

Table 2 below gives the results of the computers' picks against the opening spread.

Table 2: Results of the highlighted picks versus the spread in Week Two.

My algorithm decided to sit out Week One, and the FPI was just at .500 (3-3) for the suggested bets. Overall, however, both machines performed well consider the full slate of games. My computer went 2-15 (59.5%) for the weekend while the FPI did even better at 24-13 (64.9%).

Table 3 below gives the results of the point total bets for Week One, which were also quite positive.

Not.

Table 3: Results of the recommended point total bets ("over / under" bets) in Week One.

My methodology for point total betting continued last year's trend of being awful. The full set of picks in Table 3 were a poor 8-14 (36.4%), but the so-called "lock" picks were a dismal 2-7 (22%).

With the current trend of poor performance, I have to wonder if the point total bets are no longer worthy to be a part of this analysis. I will continue to track the predictions and the results, but it might be time to place them in a van down by the Red Cedar River. 

Updated Big Ten Odds and Expected Wins

Following the results of Week Four, I have re-run the full season Monte Carlo simulation using the updated power rankings, including the current uncertainty in those rankings, to update the season odds for each team. Table 4 below gives the update for the Big Ten conference and Table 5 shows the updated Big Ten win distribution matrix.

Note that all the rankings listed next to each team refer to my computer's power rankings and not any of the national polls.

Table 4: Updated Big Ten rankings, expected wins, strengths of schedule and season odds following Week One.

Table 5: Updated Big Ten win distribution matrix after Week One.

The Big Ten finished Week One with an overall record of 17-1 with only Minnesota taking a last second loss to North Carolina. Conference dark horse USC scored one of the biggest wins of the weekend in beating LSU in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Illinois, Iowa, and Purdue all managed to shut out Group of Five teams, while Northwestern, Ohio State, and Washington all surrendered less than a touchdown.

Overall, Figure 1 suggests that Maryland had the best performance relative to the spread. Penn State, Indiana, and Northwestern all also had a strong first weekend. Ohio State, Michigan, and Michigan State all failed to cover by a few points.

The teams that struggled the most relative to expectation were Wisconsin, which only beat Western Michigan (+23) by 14 points, UCLA, and Oregon, which managed just a 10-point win over FCS opponent Idaho.

It is still very early and my simulation only has a little more data than it did last week. That said, Penn State was the Big Ten team that overall had the best weekend, thanks to a 34-12 road win over West Virginia (+10). As a result, the Nittany Lions have the best current odds to win the Big Ten at 33%.

Remaining Schedule for Michigan State

The Spartans failed to cover the 11-point spread over Florida Atlantic and as a result Michigan State dropped slightly in my power poll from No. 66 to No. 70 nationally. However, the expected win total actually increased to 5.51 for the Spartans because the first win of the season is officially in the books. 

The Spartans' overall season odds remain relatively unchanged expect for the odds to make a bowl game which have now edged up to 48%. Yeah, that's the ticket.

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.

Figure 2: Updated odds and spread projections for Michigan State’s remaining games, following Week One and based on a 80,000 cycle Monte Carlo simulation

It is too early to draw too many conclusions from Figure 2 just yet. Relative to just a week ago, next week's road game at Maryland looks a little bit harder, as does the home games in November against Indiana and Purdue.

All of the games during the gauntlet of ranked teams in the middle of the season now all look a bit easier, especially the games against Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon due to the lackluster Week One performance of those three teams. But I would not read too much into this data either. It usually takes a few weeks for the numbers to stabilize.

National Overview

For the today's final skit, let's take a quick spin around the country and get an update on the national happenings over the weekend.

As mentioned above, Penn State and USC had two of the biggest wins of the weekend. But the team that had the best overall start to the season was Notre Dame. 

The Fighting Irish played a true road game at Texas A&M and came away with a 10-point victory. Notre Dame has a very manageable remaining schedule. The only game which projects as less than a 10-point spread in the regular season finale at USC (+2.5). My simulation currently gives the Irish the sixth-best odds to make the playoffs at 49.3%.

The teams at the top of the SEC also had a strong start to the season. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas all won by a combined score of 396-to-9. Well isn't that special? Many of those wins were over FCS teams, but Georgia's 34-3 smackdown of Clemson was certainly notable.

Some of the teams near the bottom of the SEC, based on preseason rankings, also had strong starts to the season. Kentucky managed to blank Southern Miss, and Vanderbilt scored an upset win over Virginia Tech.

In ACC action, the biggest story is Miami's decisive win at Florida, 41-17. This win, coupled with not-so-great starts from Clemson, Florida State, and Virginia Tech places the Hurricanes clearly in the ACC driver's seat. My simulation give them a 40% chance to win the conference and a 55% chance to make the playoffs.

It was a fairly quiet opening weekend in the Big 12, with only West Virginia and Houston taking loses. That said, the fact the Arizona gave up 39 points to New Mexico and Texas Tech gave up 45 points to Abilene Christian in regulation calls into questions if either of those teams are ready for prime time either.

Houston's loss is notable only because it came at the hands of UNLV from the Mountain West by 20 points. While it is still very early, this win vaulted the Running Rebels to the top of my Group of Five leaderboard as the leading candidate to earn a playoff bid. 

Once again, it is far too early to take these numbers too seriously, but UNLV is now a team to watch. Other Group of Five contenders such as Boise State, Memphis, Appalachian State, James Madison, and Liberty also all won and will certainly have something to say about the eventual Group of Five Champion.

Against all odds, we have made it to the end for today. Until next time, party on, make sure to include enough cow bell, and talk amongst yourselves.