What Would Wall Street Do: Week 10 NFL Power Rankings

First things first: ALL HAIL THE BOX.

SD won't cover say you? Boxy says otherwise. CLE can't cover? Nay, jerk! Box says and CLE does! All that work to make financials a part of the betting seems not worth it. Or was it?

On the advice of Capper, I altered the stats on which the financials are based, and now the results make a lot more sense. Now, the financials are figured as follows:

The beta is now figured using a ratio of points scored to statistical score—a scaled and redesigned version of DVOA from the geniuses at Football Outsiders.

Basically, it's a ratio of points to team value over average. As an example, if NE is 40% above the average team (which scales to a score of 140), and they score 37 points, the ratio is 37/140 = 0.22. The baseline score is a score of 20 (the historical average) divided by 100 (the most average team possible), or 0.20. What that means is that if NE scored the exact amount of points it "should" score, it would score 28 points. Because they scored 37, they has a higher point to score ratio.

This is a very effective way of describing whether or not a team is performing as expected or not. So when I figure the all the financials using these ratios, the rankings now look like this:

	Sharpe	Alpha	Beta
Team	Rank	Rank	Rank
ARI	18	22	24
ATL	30	28	27
BAL	26	29	21
BUF	27	25	17
CAR	24	26	16
CHI	23	17	23
CIN	9	10	8
CLE	4	2	30
DAL	2	3	3
DEN	29	30	4
DET	7	6	18
GB	8	13	20
HOU	11	7	5
IND	3	4	9
JAC	19	23	2
KC	28	27	19
MIA	15	14	28
MIN	14	21	29
NE	1	1	14
NO	12	9	25
NYG	6	5	12
NYJ	25	8	32
OAK	20	15	26
PHI	17	20	31
PIT	5	12	11
SD	10	11	6
SEA	13	16	13
SF	31	31	1
STL	32	32	10
TB	22	19	22
TEN	16	18	15
WAS	21	24	7

Almost the same as before, really. But now, I've figured out HOW to use these scores. Or, more accurately, my lovely wife gave me the idea.

She suggested, "Why do you have to tell the Box how many games you want to pick? Shouldn't the Box tell you? Shouldn't there be a threshold?" I don't know why I hadn't thought of it, but it was genius.

But rather than letting the Box tell me what games to bet, (since that means there would be weeks I only bet one game, sometimes zero, and that's no fun) I'm having the Box now tell me what games to DOUBLE the bet. The beta does an AMAZING job of gauging volatility for spread bets, and a Sharpe/Alpha average picks moneyline winners like I pick my nose.

I'll get more into this during the week, but for now, let's just say I would have made FIFTEEN TIMES MORE on my bets if I'd been doing it all along. Pure semi-genius.

Check back for results later today or tomorrow—it was another winning week! A little ugly, but still a winner!