Vegas Spread Index

The Vegas Spread Index ranks teams by estimating who the odds makers would favor from top to bottom. Each team’s VSI indicates by how many points that team would be favored against an average opponent.

Year: 2009 | 2008 |

Week: Pre-season | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |

Vegas Spread Index- Week 10 Favorites of the odds makers
#	Team	Spread
1	Texas	28
2	Florida	24.5
3	Alabama	20.5
4	Oklahoma	20.5
5	TCU	19.5
6	Ohio St.	19
7	Oregon	16.5
8	Southern Cal	16.5
9	Boise St.	16.5
10	Penn St.	16.5
11	LSU	15.5
12	Nebraska	14.5
13	Virginia Tech	14.5
14	Cincinnati	13.5
15	Oklahoma St.	13.5
16	Mississippi	13
17	Tennessee	13
18	Texas Tech	13
19	Miami	12.5
20	Georgia Tech	12.5
21	Arkansas	11.5
22	Arizona	11.5
23	BYU	10.5
24	Clemson	10.5
25	Pittsburgh	10.5
26	Georgia	10
27	Stanford	9
28	Auburn	8.5
29	Wisconsin	8.5
30	Oregon St.	8
31	Kansas	7.5
32	South Carolina	7
33	West Virginia	6.5
34	Nevada	6.5
35	Notre Dame	6.5
36	California	6.5
37	Wake Forest	6
38	North Carolina	6
39	Boston College	6
40	Utah	6
41	Houston	5.5
42	Iowa	5.5
43	Michigan St.	5.5
44	Texas A&M	5.5
45	Missouri	5
46	Mississippi St	5
47	South Florida	4.5
48	Florida St.	3.5
49	Kansas St.	3.5
50	Fresno St.	3
51	Kentucky	3
52	Arizona St.	2.5
53	Connecticut	2.5
54	Purdue	2.5
55	Air Force	2
56	Michigan	1.5
57	Southern Miss.	1.5
58	Minnesota	1
59	Tulsa	1
60	Cent. Michigan	1
61	Baylor	0.5
62	Rutgers	0.5
63	N.C. State	0.5
64	Troy	0
65	Illinois	0
66	Washington	0
67	Iowa St.	0
68	UCLA	0
69	Navy	-0.5
70	Duke	-1
71	Northwestern	-1.5
72	Virginia	-1.5
73	East Carolina	-2
74	Colorado	-2.5
75	N. Illinois	-2.5
76	UCF	-2.5
77	Vanderbilt	-3
78	Indiana	-4.5
79	Marshall	-4.5
80	Middle Tenn. St.	-5
81	Louisville	-5
82	Maryland	-5
83	Louisiana Tech	-5.5
84	Temple	-6
85	UAB	-6.5
86	SMU	-7
87	La.-Monroe	-8
88	Arkansas St.	-8
89	Syracuse	-9
90	Ohio	-9
91	San Diego St.	-9.5
92	Buffalo	-9.5
93	Bowling Green	-10
94	Kent St.	-10
95	Idaho	-10
96	UTEP	-11
97	Memphis	-11
98	Utah St.	-11.5
99	Hawaii	-11.5
100	Toledo	-12
101	UNLV	-12
102	W. Michigan	-13
103	Akron	-13
104	Colorado St.	-13.5
105	Fla. Atlantic	-14
106	Army	-14.5
107	La.-Lafayette	-15
108	Wyoming	-15.5
109	Miami (Ohio)	-16
110	Ball St.	-17
111	North Texas	-18
112	Tulane	-18
113	Rice	-19
114	Florida Intl	-19
115	New Mexico	-19.5
116	San Jose St.	-19.5
117	Washington St.	-21.5
118	E. Michigan	-26
119	W. Ky	-26.5
120	New Mexico St.	-27.5

Computing the Vegas Spread Index

The primary inputs for calculating the Vegas Spread Index are the weekly Las Vegas lines which reflect the collective wisdom of the odds makers and every fan who votes with their wallet.

In theory, a team’s VSI should be simple and straight forward to compute with the help of the transitive property of mathematics. For example if Florida is 10 points better than Tennessee and Tennessee is 7 points better than Kentucky, then Florida is 17 points better than Kentucky.

Play this computation out for 50+ college football games a week over 15 weeks (or literally thousands of games for college basketball season) and, voila! you have honed in on the strength of every team.

In practice however, examining every game, outcome, and spread reveals some surprising complexities that must be resolved to maintain accurate numbers. These variations include:

• Adjusting for home field advantage - which is nowhere near as straightforward as it sounds
• Balancing if point spread differences are more a reflection of the strength of the favorite team or the weakness of the underdog
• Maintaining the integrity of a quantitative formula while striving to reflect a myriad of external and human factors including injuries, rivalry games, coaching changes, rematches, postponements, etc