Is it correct to include the lopsidedness of the match when calculating probabilities?
I know it is all the rage in NCAA football to disregard ranking systems that include the point spread for a game, on the grounds that winning is all that matters. However, the motivation behind such a movement is suspect. In fact, Jeff Sagarin has had major conflicts with the BCS (football ranking system) because of this very issue (however, I see recently that he has not dropped out as he had originally claimed he would). Despite the extent to which people complain, Sagarin points out that not including the point spread in his ranking system leads to a less accurate prediction of future sets. Therefore, on the grounds that the goal of a ranking system is to predict which team is better, and which team will win, then it is better to include the point spread in the ratings analysis. Personally, it looks to me that the real reason people object to including point spread in ranking systems is because doing so gives results different from opinion polls. I have done a lot of testing of pote
