IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jospec/v11y2010i4p443-455.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Not So Fast, My Friend: Biases in College Football Polls

Author

Listed:
  • Mark David Witte

    (College of Charleston, South Carolina, wittem@cofc.edu)

  • McDonald Paul Mirabile

    (College of Charleston, South Carolina)

Abstract

The national championship game in Division IA football is selected in part by voters. Are the voters biased? Examining all weekly rankings from 2004 to 2008, the authors find the following results. Voters in the USA Today (Coaches’) Poll tend to rank their team’s recent opponents 4.3 places higher than the average voting coach and rank the recent opponents of their alma mater 3.2 places higher. Additionally, both coaches and sports media (AP Poll) overassess teams who play in certain Bowl Championship Series (BCS) conferences relative to non-BCS conferences and reward ‘‘running up the score’’ by voting teams with high offensive output above their peers.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark David Witte & McDonald Paul Mirabile, 2010. "Not So Fast, My Friend: Biases in College Football Polls," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 443-455, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:11:y:2010:i:4:p:443-455
    DOI: 10.1177/1527002509353398
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1527002509353398
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/1527002509353398?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Theo Offerman & Joep Sonnemans, 2004. "What’s Causing Overreaction? An Experimental Investigation of Recency and the Hot‐hand Effect," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 106(3), pages 533-554, October.
    2. Roger Vergin, 2001. "Overreaction in the NFL point spread market," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 497-509.
    3. Rodney J. Paul & Andrew P. Weinbach & Patrick Coate, 2007. "Expectations and Voting in the NCAA Football Polls," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(4), pages 412-424, August.
    4. Lebovic, James H. & Sigelman, Lee, 2001. "The forecasting accuracy and determinants of football rankings," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 105-120.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Randall W. Bennett, 2019. "Holdover Bias in the College Football Betting Market," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 47(1), pages 103-110, March.
    2. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Potoski, Matthew, 2014. "Conflicts of interest distort public evaluations: Evidence from NCAA football coaches," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 51-63.
    3. Daniel Stone & Basit Zafar, 2014. "Do we follow others when we should outside the lab? Evidence from the AP top 25," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 73-102, August.
    4. Justin M. Ross & Sarah E. Larson & Chad Wall, 2012. "Are Surveys Of Experts Unbiased? Evidence From College Football Rankings," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(4), pages 502-522, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justin M. Ross & Sarah E. Larson & Chad Wall, 2012. "Are Surveys Of Experts Unbiased? Evidence From College Football Rankings," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 30(4), pages 502-522, October.
    2. Trevon Logan, 2011. "Econometric tests of American college football's conventional wisdom," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(20), pages 2493-2518.
    3. Trevon D. Logan, 2007. "Whoa, Nellie! Empirical Tests of College Football's Conventional Wisdom," NBER Working Papers 13596, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Stacey L. Brook & Xiaomin Gai, 2020. "How Do Outside Experts Evaluate Team Performance? An Empirical Analysis of Harris Poll Voting Behavior," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(8), pages 1590-1601, December.
    5. Matthew Amor & William Griffiths, 2003. "Modelling the Behaviour and Performance of Australian Football Tipsters," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 871, The University of Melbourne.
    6. B. Jay Coleman & Andres Gallo & Paul M. Mason & Jeffrey W. Steagall, 2010. "Voter Bias in the Associated Press College Football Poll," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 11(4), pages 397-417, August.
    7. Stekler, H.O. & Sendor, David & Verlander, Richard, 2010. "Issues in sports forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 606-621, July.
      • Herman O. Stekler & David Sendor & Richard Verlander, 2009. "Issues in Sports Forecasting," Working Papers 2009-002, The George Washington University, Department of Economics, H. O. Stekler Research Program on Forecasting.
    8. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Sabrina Hammiche, 2008. "Que vaut la flexibilité des choix individuels de transport ?. Une étude de cas expérimental," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(1), pages 97-111.
    9. Boubaker, Sabri & Farag, Hisham & Nguyen, Duc Khuong, 2015. "Short-term overreaction to specific events: Evidence from an emerging market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C), pages 153-165.
    10. Randall W. Bennett, 2019. "Holdover Bias in the College Football Betting Market," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 47(1), pages 103-110, March.
    11. Kotchen, Matthew J. & Potoski, Matthew, 2014. "Conflicts of interest distort public evaluations: Evidence from NCAA football coaches," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 51-63.
    12. Ferda Halicioglu, 2005. "Can We Predict The Outcome Of The International Football Tournaments : The Case Of Euro 2000?," Microeconomics 0503008, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Rodney J. Paul & Andrew P. Weinbach & Patrick Coate, 2007. "Expectations and Voting in the NCAA Football Polls," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 8(4), pages 412-424, August.
    14. Klaassen, Franc J. G. M. & Magnus, Jan R., 2003. "Forecasting the winner of a tennis match," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 257-267, July.
    15. Nattavudh Powdthavee & Yohanes E. Riyanto, 2012. "Why Do People Pay for Useless Advice?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1153, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    16. Kevin Lee & Scott Miller & Nicole Velasquez & Christi Wann, 2013. "The Effect of Investor Bias and Gender on Portfolio Performance and Risk," The International Journal of Business and Finance Research, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 7(1), pages 1-16.
    17. Leitner, Christoph & Zeileis, Achim & Hornik, Kurt, 2010. "Forecasting sports tournaments by ratings of (prob)abilities: A comparison for the EUROÂ 2008," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 471-481, July.
    18. Antonios Antoniou & Emilios Galariotis & Spyros Spyrou, 2006. "The effect of time-varying risk on the profitability of contrarian investment strategies in a thinly traded market: a Kalman filter approach," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(18), pages 1317-1329.
    19. Ferda HALICIOGLU, 2005. "Forecasting the Professional Team Sporting Events: Evidence from Euro 2000 and 2004 Football Tournaments," Industrial Organization 0508001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. del Corral, Julio & Prieto-Rodríguez, Juan, 2010. "Are differences in ranks good predictors for Grand Slam tennis matches?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 551-563, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jospec:v:11:y:2010:i:4:p:443-455. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.