📈 How Good Are College Football Predictions, Really?
We don't just make predictions and move on — every one gets written down and checked against what actually happened. Here's the honest scorecard, good or bad.
⬇ Download the full graded history as CSV — don't take our word for it, run your own numbers.
71%
Right about 71 times out of every 100 games this season, based on replaying 513 real games.
For context, just always picking the home team would only be right 57.1% of the time — so the model's real analysis is worth about 14 points over that simplest possible guess, a genuine edge, not just noise.
🎯 When We Say We're Sure, Are We Actually Right?
The single most honest check of any prediction model: if we say a team has a 70% chance and that's a fair number, they should actually win about 70% of the time we say that — not 50%, not 95%. Below, the bar shows how often the home team actually won when we gave a prediction in that range; the marker shows what we predicted. A bar that reaches its marker means our confidence levels mean what they claim.
10-20% predicted
0.0% actual
20-30% predicted
15.0% actual
30-40% predicted
16.3% actual
40-50% predicted
38.7% actual
50-60% predicted
56.3% actual
60-70% predicted
69.2% actual
70-80% predicted
84.0% actual
80-90% predicted
97.0% actual
90-100% predicted
100.0% actual
Based on replaying 513 real College Football games this season, only ever using information the model would have actually had before each game.
🆚 Us vs. Vegas vs. ESPN
Every prediction we make is written down before the game happens, then graded once it's over — so this is a real report card, not hindsight. 0 games graded so far, 0 still waiting on a result.
Results last checked 2026-08-03 02:03:09 UTC, across all sports — 0 newly graded that run.
No games have finished yet since we started keeping score — check back once today's games wrap up.
Show the stats behind this
For each prediction we also track how confident we were, not just whether we got the winner right — a model that says "90%" and is wrong should be judged more harshly than one that says "51%" and is wrong. That's what "average error" below measures (lower is better; 0 would be a perfect psychic, 0.25 is what you'd get by always guessing 50/50).
🧪 The Longer History
We also replayed this whole season game-by-game, only ever using information the model would have actually had before each game — a much bigger sample (513 games) than the live scorecard above, though it's a simulation rather than predictions made in real time.
Show the stats behind this
The sample size behind the calibration chart above, range by range:
| When we said | They actually won | Sample size |
|---|
| 10-20% | 0.0% | 4 games |
| 20-30% | 15.0% | 20 games |
| 30-40% | 16.3% | 49 games |
| 40-50% | 38.7% | 93 games |
| 50-60% | 56.3% | 126 games |
| 60-70% | 69.2% | 107 games |
| 70-80% | 84.0% | 75 games |
| 80-90% | 97.0% | 33 games |
| 90-100% | 100.0% | 6 games |
"All games" includes stretches early in a season where teams don't have much of a track record yet, which makes predictions noisier. "5+ games of history" filters those out. We don't compare against Vegas here because ESPN's data doesn't keep betting odds around for games that already happened — only the live scorecard above can do that comparison.
All Games
73.0%
953 games · average error 0.1974
5+ Games of History
71.2%
513 games · average error 0.1944
🔧 Are We Improving the Model Over Time?
Yes. We regularly test small adjustments against games the test never got to see beforehand, purely to check if they'd genuinely help. This time, one actually did — by enough that it's very unlikely to be luck — so predictions have automatically switched to the improved version.
Show the stats behind this
We tested a range of alternate settings against 286 games held back specifically for this check. The best one found: K-factor 44, home advantage 55 (average error 0.1891 vs. our default's 0.2033). We only trust a result like this once it clears a high statistical confidence bar (we require it to be about a 1-in-1000 fluke or better, precisely because we're testing many variations at once and the best-looking one is expected to look good by chance alone sometimes).
Currently Running
K 44
home advantage: 55 pts
Original Default
K 22
home advantage: 65 pts