One of my current projects is to figure out how to adapt football to the Simple Seasons format, which has been trickier than anticipated. Most other sports have a fairly limited range of scores: hockey (typically 0-6), soccer (typically 0-4), even basketball (drop the ones digit and most teams range from 8-12). But football has been tough because of the wide range, plus the different point values assigned to scores.
Now I’ve finally got a working prototype I like, and to test it out, I’ve simulated the upcoming Super Bowl. I started with 10 sims on paper; Kansas City won 6 of them by an average of 9.8 points. And that’s all well and good.
But to really kick things up a notch, I decided to test it on the computer with 5,000 sims. And the results were similar: Kansas City won 50.4% of the matchups in regulation, with 5.1% going to overtime. On average, the score ended up being roughly KC 27, Philadelphia 26, which really isn’t something I’d bet on.
Next up for the future Simple Seasons Football, I need to do some tweaking and work out a full season. But if the score of the game this weekend *does* end up being 27-26, I’ll post the game as-is right then and there.
And stay tuned tomorrow for a different type of football! I’ll be posting Simple Seasons Soccer along with the 2021-2022 EPL and 2022 MLS and NWSL seasons.
