My formula makes a surprising prediction for the BYU vs. Notre Dame game

This week marks a new era for the Higinbotham formula. And no, it's not because I'm tired of it saying that BYU is going to lose to Utah. It's because every FBS team has now played at least four FBS teams, meaning we now have enough data to make our predictions based solely on what has happened on the field this season. No more recruiting rankings, transfer portal rankings, returning production rankings, or stats or strength of schedule from last season. Just this year's stats and this year's strength of schedule, which is based only on how opponents have played this season.

To be more specific, the following changes have been made:

1. Previously, for teams that had played less than four games against FBS opponents, each of those games was given 25% of the weight in terms of the stats for the offensive and defensive ratings, and the remainder of the weight was given to the ratings I created before the season started based on last year's data as well as recruiting, transfer portal, and returning production rankings. Now that everyone has played at least four games, those ratings no longer matter.

2. Previously, the basis for a team's strength of schedule was their opponents' preseason ratings, and then it was adjusted based on how their opponents had done this season against other opponents. Now, the basis is the opponents' stats from this season against other opponents, and it's adjusted through multiple iterations to account for the opponents' strength of schedule. This made a massive difference for some teams' SOS, including for a certain team coming to Provo this week.

3. Instead of each of this years' games getting the same weight, each teams' three most recent games are weighted twice as much as all their other games. This is also reflected in their strength of schedule to balance things out. This way, if teams have had recent injuries or anything else that has affected how they've played recently that is likely to affect how they will play in the next game, my formula will account for that.

4. There were a couple mistakes in my formula last week that affected teams that had played more than four games. One, the strength of schedule only accounted for their first four opponents, and two, because each of this seasons' games were given 25% of the weight with the rest going to the preseason ratings, if a team had more than four games, the percentage of weight given to this years' games was more than 100%, meaning the weight given to the preseason ratings was negative, meaning teams were being punished for being expected to be good. I fixed both of these problems.

Because of these changes, and because of BYU's enormous 8.3-3.6 yards per play advantage against a decent Iowa St team, you may notice the changes from last week's predictions to this week's predictions will be significantly more dramatic than they have been in previous weeks:

BYU 23 Notre Dame 22 (LETS GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!)

BYU 26 UCF 21

BYU 34 Arizona St 16

Utah 25 BYU 24

BYU 32 Baylor 19

Kansas 26 BYU 25 (What?)

BYU 39 Cincinnati 17

That's right. Despite the fact that BYU is a double-digit underdog against Notre Dame, and despite the fact that my formula has had Notre Dame winning this game the entire season, at times by double digits, and despite the fact that my formula's point spreads are usually pretty close to the point spreads given on cbssports.com, and despite the fact that Notre Dame is still the number one team in the nation according to my formula, and that they just had a dominant performance against Stanford, my formula says BYU is going to beat Notre Dame on Saturday thanks to home-field advantage and BYU being ranked number 5.

So how did this happen? It's because Notre Dame's strength of schedule took a big hit. Previously, their games against Wisconsin, Rice, Michigan St, and Purdue were being ranked equally while the North Carolina game was being mistakenly ignored. (It affected the stats, but not the strength of schedule.) Now, Purdue, North Carolina, and Stanford are all being weighted twice as heavily as Wisconsin, Rice, and Michigan St.

The Wisconsin game was previously carrying Notre Dame's strength of schedule because even though the Badgers aren't ranked, my formula really likes them because they lead the nation in yards per play allowed with 3.8. But now, the weight has been shifted from that game to the North Carolina and Stanford games, which really hurts Notre Dame's strength of schedule, and now, even though they're still number one according to my formula, the gap between them and BYU is small enough that home field advantage is more than enough to make up for it.

What's also great is that my formula is predicting for the Holy War to be significantly closer than it was last week when it was saying 29-18. In fact, BYU is now ranked higher than Utah according to my formula, so the only reason it still says Utah will win is because it's in Salt Lake. If there were to be a second Holy War in the Big 12 championship as my formula has said for multiple weeks that there would be, BYU would win.

Except, my formula no longer says BYU's going to the Big 12 championship game because it somehow now has us losing to Kansas, who is now 2-3 and just lost to Utah by 17. Previously my formula only had BYU beating Kansas by 1 point, so it was only a 2 point shift, but still, with how favorably the rest of the predictions for BYU have changed, how did this one change for the worse?

Part of it was because Kansas had 6.7 yards per play to Utah's 6.9, so while they did have less, the fact that it was even close against a team that's been dominating everyone helps them. It gives them a strength of schedule boost without hurting their stats too much. What may have helped even more was the fact that their season-opening loss to Missouri, in which they were out-yards-per-play-ed 6.6 to 3.8, is now being weighed less heavily than their other three games, where they've out-yards-per-play-ed their opponents 7 to 4.7. So the Kansas game could be the same trap game it was two seasons ago.

OK, I know I yapped longer than usual. I just felt like there was a lot to yap about. It's time for my weekly competition with Dick Harmon. Here are my predictions from last week, and here are his.

For each game where we both made a prediction, whoever gets the closest in terms of point spread (or whoever picks the correct winner if we disagreed on who would win) gets 2 points with the following possible bonuses: +4 for the BYU game, +2 for the Utah game, +2 for ranked matchups, +2 for non-conference Big 12 vs P4 games, x2 if we get it exactly right, and x2 if we disagreed on who would win.

Also, whoever gets the closest point total gets one point with the following bonuses: +2 for the BYU game, +1 for the Utah game, +1 for ranked matchups, +1 for non-conference Big 12 vs P4 games, x2 if we get it exactly right, and x2 if our predicted point spreads were at least 15 points apart.

By the way, I'm going to clarify ahead of time that yes, the BYU-Notre Dame game will count as a non-conference Big 12 vs. P4 game because Notre Dame is basically a P4 team. I just wanted to publicly make that decision before the game so it wouldn't look like I was cheating if I get that one. It's going to be worth a lot of points because it's the BYU game, a ranked matchup, and a Big 12 vs P4 game, and it's likely that Harmon will pick Notre Dame, meaning we'll disagree on the winner.

I currently lead the season series 3-2, having won the last three. But maybe my aforementioned mistakes from this last week will open the door for Harmon to end the streak and tie the series. Let's see what happens:

And the final score is... Harmon 29 Higinbotham 19. Harmon ends the streak and ties the series at 3. I actually fixed my errors from last week in excel to see if it would make me win, but it didn't change anything, so that wasn't the deciding factor. What was the deciding factor was BYU making that field goal at the end of the Iowa St game. Otherwise, it would've been 21-10, my point spread would've been closer than his, I would've gotten those 6 points instead of him, and I would've won 25-23. ButI can't complain about BYU getting some much-needed style points.

Here are my predictions for this week:

Texas St 46 Colorado St 32

West Virginia 39 Cincinnati 34

Texas 31 Florida 17

Kansas 33 Kansas St 25

LSU 31 Mississippi St 24

Indiana 29 Ohio St 24

Texas Tech 32 Arizona St 22

Georgia 31 Auburn 19

Alabama 26 Tennessee 23

Ole Miss 29 Missouri 28

Miami 35 Florida St 23

TCU 23 Baylor 22

BYU 23 Notre Dame 22

Houston 32 Oklahoma St 29

Oklahoma 24 Kentucky 21

Wisconsin 23 UCLA 22

Utah 25 Colorado 22

Oregon 28 Nebraska 25

And now for what I say at the end of every article, which may or may not become especially applicable this weekend: Remember to be kind to the officials.

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