Oddsmakers, Analytics Disagree on Whether Cal is Favored in Hawaii Bowl

Should we trust the gamblers or the analytics when deciding whether Cal or Hawaii is the favorite in the December 24 Hawaii Bowl?

The oddsmakers are human beings who set the odds for football games at betting sites, and those odds are then shifted based on the betting trends, with the goal of having the same amount of money bet on each team.

The oddsmakers all have Cal as a slight favorite as of Thursday morning (December 11). BetMGM, DraftKings and Caesars Sportsbook all have the Golden Bears as 1.5-point favorites, and FanDuel makes Cal a 2.5-point favorite at the moment.

You can understand why the Bears are favorites in the minds of oddsmakers.

Cal (7-5) played three games against teams that were ranked in the College Football Playoff rankings at the time of the game, and the Bears won two of them. Cal beat No. 15 Louisville on the road and topped No. 21 SMU at home in the teams’ final regular season game. Cal was very much in its game against No. 15 Virginia before an interception in the final minute ended Cal’s bid.

Meanwhile, Hawaii (8-4) faced no team that was ranked when the game was played. And the best team the Rainbow Warriors faced was Arizona, which finished with a 9-3 record and a No. 17 ranking and beat Hawaii 40-6 early in the season.

Hawaii finished tied for fifth in the Mountain West Conference with a 5-3 conference mark, and although the ACC was not particularly strong this season, it still was considered better than the Mountain West. The ACC had three teams in the top-25 of the final CFP rankings while the Mountain West had none, and Cal had a 4-4 conference mark, tied with Clemson and Louisville and ahead of Florida State.

But it’s a different story with the analytics, which piece together the numbers to form an opinion that is devoid of personal bias.

According to the ESPN Analytics, which apparently are based on its Power Football Power Index, Hawaii has a 59.7% chance to win the Hawaii Bowl while Cal has just a 40.3% chance to win that game.

And you can see how the numbers arrived at that mathematic conclusion.

Cal and Hawaii played two common opponents this season – Stanford and San Diego State.

Cal lost to both those opponents by wide margins, getting clobbered by San Diego State by a score of 34-0 and losing to Stanford by three touchdowns, 31-10.

Meanwhile, Hawaii beat Stanford 23-20 and crushed San Diego State 38-6.

You might note that both of Cal’s losses in those two games were on the road, while both of Hawaii’s wins were on the Rainbow Warriors’ home field. But that just strengthens the case for Hawaii being favored because the Hawaii Bowl will be played on the Rainbow Warriors’ home field at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletic Complex on the University of Hawaii campus.

Hawaii was 6-1 at home this season, its only defeat coming in a 23-21 loss to Fresno State when the Rainbow Warriors failed to convert a two-point try with 10 seconds left.

Cal was 3-3 in road games this season, and that comes with caveats. One of the road wins came against an Oregon State team that won just one game against an FBS opponent this season, and another came against a lousy Boston College team (the Eagles finished 2-10) when Cal intercepted a pass in the end zone after the Eagles got to the Cal 5-yard line with 15 seconds left in a four-point Cal victory.

And there is one other factor that the oddsmakers and number machines probably did not consider: Cal performed better when it was an underdog than when it was favored this season.

Oddsmakers made Cal the underdog in eight of 11 games against FBS opposition this season, but the Bears went 5-3 in those games as the underdogs. And that included going 2-0 in games in which the Bears’ opponent was favored by more than 12 points. Cal defeated Louisville when the Cardinals were favored by 18.5 points and knocked off SMU when the Mustangs were 13.5-point favorites.

However, in the three games Cal was favored against FBS teams, the Bears were just 1-2, and that included a lopsided loss to San Diego State when the Bears were 14-point favorites.

Cal’s lone win as a favorite came against North Carolina, when a Tar Heels ball-carrier fumbled at the Cal half-yard line when he was about to score the go-ahead touchdown with less than four minutes remaining in a three-point Cal triumph.

There is one difference between the oddsmakers’ point spread and the analytics. The point spread is likely to change between now and game time as more money is bet on one team or the other. The analytics will not change; it is stuck with the numbers already in the books.

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