2008 Elite Selection Playoff: Week 14 and Conference Championship Predictions

Disclaimer: The following is not intended for betting purposes.

As promised here and here, this week the AV ranking will be used to predict the Big 12, ACC, and SEC conference championship games. Forgetting for the moment that the AV Ranking would have put Texas in the Big 12 championship over Oklahoma, these conference championship games feature the following opponents:

Big 12—Missouri vs. Oklahoma
ACC—Boston College vs. Virginia Tech
SEC—Alabama vs. Florida

The AV Ranking (see below) predicts the winners to be Oklahoma (0.903 over Missouri at 0.656), Boston College (0.681 over Virginia Tech at 0.627), and Florida (0.811 over Alabama at 0.805).

However, Alabama and Florida are ranked so closely the game is really a toss-up and Boston College doesn't have a sizable lead over the Hokies. In the past the AV Ranking has been better than 70 percent accurate in picking the winners of the BCS and BCS National Championship games.

This is all well and good, but predicting the winner is hardly as exciting as trying to determine if a team will cover the spread. Shortly before this article was posted the Vegas lines on the games were:

Oklahoma (-17)
Florida (-10)
Boston College (-1)

Normally it would be difficult to be confident beating the spread in games like the SEC and ACC championships were the AV Ranking point differential is very small and in a game like the Big 12 championship where the line is very large. However, the Big 12 and SEC championship games present unique situations.

Due to problems embedding the tables, the rest of the article can be seen here.