F O M SPORTS
THE POWER IN POWER RATINGS
BY
MIKE LEETHE POWER IN POWER RATINGS
BY
With mathematical precision, our world spins on its axis. Should the power behind this rotational phenomenon make even the slightest mistake, sure as there is heaven and earth, there would be - no earth! We would find ourselves hurdling through space into some dark, distant black hole. Thank heaven, and I don’t use that term loosely, the mathematical laws of our universe continue to show an amazing power and consistency from the macroscopic reality of distant planets all the way down to the smallest of quantum leap particles found in the hangnail of our left index finger. In short, there is order in chaos. Everything happens for a reason. There are no mistakes. The science of numbers is one of awesome power, which leads us straight into the POWER OF POWER RATINGS. How’s that for a intro!
Now that you are totally convinced that mathematical laws make the world go round, let me further show you that the same laws make pigskins go up and pigskins go down, pointspreads go up and pointspreads go down and bankrolls go up and (unfortunately) bankrolls go down. Welcome to the world of power ratings, your mathematical grounding laws which will keep you spinning on your handicapping axis as opposed to financially careening off into the depths of a forbidden, bookie black hole know as No-Money-Land.
Since we have become involved in somewhat of a Star Wars’ theme, let’s go with the POWER to fight fire with fire by using:
POINTS SCORED AND POINTS AGAINST
In your daily sports pages, and in our Moneymaker Newsletter, you’ll find power you didn’t know you possessed. To the right of your NFL teams’ win-loss percentages, you’ll see points scored and points against. You will also find this information in the stats in the Moneymaker Newsletter. The magical number we’ll use here is 10. Take the POINTS ALLOWED on defense and multiply them by 10. Let’s say Denver has scored 105 points and allowed only 70. Take the 70 allowed on defense and multiple it by 10. This gives you 700. Okay, now divide the 700 by the number of points the Broncos have scored on offense, which, in this case, is 105. 700 divided by 105 gives you 6.6. The mathematical laws of the universe have given you a power rating of 6.6 for Denver. I’m sure you are wondering what to do with this 6.6 rating. My method is to subtract it from 100. this gives us a Denver power rating of 93.4. I personally prefer my power ratings to work their down from 100.
The amazing thing about this method is that it doesn’t matter where you begin. Four weeks of the NFL season may have been played and then again, 9 weeks could have gone by before you apply this power rating method. All you need is a piece of paper, a pen and calculator. Let’s say 6 weeks for the season have elapsed and you want to work out the power ratings for all the NFL clubs. For example, let’s say San Francisco has scored 180 points (30 points per game average), while giving up 132 points (22 points per game average. Multiply the 132 points allowed by 10 which gives us 1320. Now divide the 1320 by 180, which equals 7.3. Subtract the 7.3 from 100 and we have a 92.7 rating for the 49ers.
You can do this exercise from top to bottom in the NFL and it will not take you longer than 10-20 minutes. At the bottom of the barrel, you might have a team like Dallas who let’s say has 42 points scored and 144 points allowed, a signature of a very bad team. Now perform your mathematical miracles. Let’s see, we have 144 (points allowed) multiplied by 10 for a total of 1440. Divide the 1440 by 42 (points scored), giving us a rating of 34.2. If we subtract 34.2 from 100, poor Dallas would carry an NFL power rating of 65.8. If Dallas played San Francisco on a neutral field, we would favor the 49ers(92.7) over Dallas (65.8) by a whopping 25.9 points!
Fortunately, such big margins are extremely rare in the NFL as you will find teams ranging between 83.2 and 96.4 with their final power ratings. Don’t forget to give the home team 2-3 points for home advantage. Take your POWER SPREAD and then compare it with the Vegas line. The bigger the difference, the better the play for you in the directions of your POWER LINE. As Obie Won (past tense of win!) once said, “May the power be with you.” Here is one more mathematical law, which should guide you.
POWER WAVE WATCHING
If you don’t have the time and inclination to formulate your own power ratings, check out the Lee Line Chart in the Moneymaker Newsletter where we carry our power ratings for College and Pro teams. The trick with power ratings is, knowing what to do with them. There is one funny little paradox about power ratings that can be a virtual gold mine if you tap into it. It seems as though the ratings are in a constant state of flux. They go up and down based on the performance of the teams from week to week. The mathematical universe is such that it is a virtual certainty that good days are followed by bad days, which in turn are followed by good days, etc. Take these teams’ power rating adjustment from week to week, for example.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
| Team A | 90 | 92 | 92 | 94 | 95 | 93 | 92 | 94 | 95 | 94 |
| Team B | 82 | 81 | 79 | 79 | 80 | 78 | 77 | 79 | 77 | 75 |
Can you spot a pattern in both teams’ ratings? Surfers will tell you one key to winning is catching the right wave. They will wait out a series of small waves in the attempt to catch a “sweet” wave coming in the next beg set. In a way, that is exactly what is going on with the ratings above. Team A starts out at 90 and jumps to a 92 the next week. It remains at 92 and then climbs to 94 and then 95 by week #5. The big waves have been coming in the past few weeks for this team, which could mean it’s time for low tide! Should you bet AGAINST Team A at this time? As you can see from the rating of 93 in week t, the team threw in a lousy performance. It’s not often easy in knowing exactly when you should “shift” and go the other way against a trend but this ever expanding mathematical universe points you in the right directions more often than not. After week 6, Team A’s rating dipped again in week 7 only to rise in week’s 8 and 9.
Team B is a bad team, one in a different class than team a. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that bad clubs don’t catch many big waves! In other words, their rating’s are either sinking or remaining the same. After one or two good games, they’ll fall back to earth. Team B declined the first few weeks, not showing any sign of recovery until week 5. At that point the rating went up to 80 but as expected in week 6, it dipped down to 78. A rise to 79 in week 8 was followed by another dip in week 9. Are you beginning to get the feel of how this wave watching exercise works?
Good teams keep their big wave form longer than do bad teams. Your goal is to go ON a good team after a power dip. Look to g AGAINST a bad team after a power surge. Power wave watching is somewhat of a skill and with most skills you will improve your performance with constant practice. Keep logs of each team as the season progresses. Match up the opponents and try to spot waves going in opposite directions. Suppose Team A’s power rating pattern looked like this by week #5: 93-93-92-91. Team B looked like this: 77-76-77-79. Team A was due for a power surge while Team B was heading for a power dip. You then have a best bet in the direction of Team A. As I said, you can use my power ratings but it will be up to you to log the ratings from week to week.
There is an additional bonus found in this power wave method. I will automatically put you AGAINST the betting public more often than not, which is exactly where you want to be.
I hope you enjoy using these 2 powerful mathematical methods. With time, patience and practice, you will in effect be able to control some of the mathematical laws that govern human affairs. In other words, we now have a much better capacity for beating that elusive number called the pointspread!
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