FanPost

Super Prediction Action Machine 2018 - Week 2

SPAM predicted Iowa would beat NIU 30-24. The actual score was 33-7, and although the Huskies weren't able to score much, SPAM nailed Iowa's offensive output pretty well.

If you're new to SPAM, many years ago I built a rudimentary statistical model of how Iowa's football seasons go. It complete ignores win/loss records, which don't seem to matter at all when teams play Iowa, and instead looks at yards gained and yards surrendered, and the relationship between those numbers and total points scored. It then predicts how many points Iowa's offense will score again each opposing defense, and how many points Iowa's opponents will score against Iowa's defense.

I ran the model for 2018, and it originally predicted 8-4 with losses to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Penn State, and Purdue. Those predictions are based on old data, and now we have at least some 2018 data to plug in. The prediction is updated below with those statistics. With the updated stats, 2 of those losses have flipped to wins, and SPAM now has Iowa going 10-2, with a decisive win at Penn State. This is of course based on a sample size of one, so ... grains of salt.

  • 1-0: Iowa over Northern Illinois (CORRECT!)
  • 2-0: Iowa over Iowa State, 29-16
  • 3-0: Iowa over UNI, 38-9
  • 3-1: Wisconsin over Iowa, 23-19
  • 3-2: Minnesota over Iowa, 28-20
  • 4-2: Iowa over Indiana, 33-23
  • 5-2: Iowa over Maryland, 34-18
  • 6-2: Iowa over Penn State, 39-23 (not a typo)
  • 7-2: Iowa over Purdue, 32-18
  • 8-2: Iowa over Northwestern, 33-17
  • 9-2: Iowa over Illinois, 28-20
  • 10-2: Iowa over Nebraska, 35-15

Unless otherwise expressly indicated by BHGP editors, this FanPost is strictly the viewpoint of the author and is not endorsed by BHGP in any way.