Prediction Simulator Answers If 2013 Alabama Crimson Tide Could Beat an NFL Team

A prediction simulation has predicted what many of us already believed: No matter how bad an NFL team is, it's still significantly better than each of college football’s top programs.

In this case, the folks at predictionmachine.com compared No. 1 Alabama (4-0) against the four currently 0-4 professional teams—the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Giants and Jacksonville Jaguars.

The results were as follows:

As expected, head coach Nick Saban's team fared just as bad as his stint in the NFL.

Sure, the 2013 Jaguars are as bad as it gets—even Jacksonville’s 1995 expansion team was predicted better. However, it’s quite ridiculous to believe an NFL-tested roster could fall short to a bunch of 18-to-22-year-olds.

Then again, the Crimson Tide has a better chance of topping the Jaguars than even they had of beating their Week 3 opponent, the Seattle Seahawks (95.0 percent).

The Predictalator, as the site calls it, uses several variables to come up with their calculations. The methods are explained on the website:

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The Predictalator is the most advanced sports forecasting software available today because it has the ability to account for all of the relevant statistical interactions of the players (playing or not playing/injured), coaches, officials, fans (homefield advantage) and weather in each game.

The Predictalator plays every game 50,000 times before it's actually played. This provides us the ability to assign probabilities to the likelihood of just about any outcome occurring in any contest including straight-up, against-the-spread and over/under winners of each game.

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For further information on the technology used, click here.

While there’s no question that Jacksonville would defeat Alabama, it does bring about one interesting debate.

Which is more likely: A 14-0 run by the Tide or a 0-16 slump by the Jaguars?

If only we could predict that one.


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