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I just realized that I never updated Some Blog Site readers on the results of my Some Fun Site project to create a football prediction method that is more accurate than the Isaacson-Tarbell Postulate (ITP).

The methods I created – More Points Wins and More Yards Wins – are more accurate. Their downside is they take slightly more work, as average margin of victory and average yardage differential are not as commonly reported or available as win-loss record is.

The 2009 NFL season is long gone, and here are the results of the various methods:

• HTW: 57%
• ITP: 61%
• MPW: 66%
• MYW: 67%

For the ideas behind the methods, please visit the Some Fun Site page.

I also noticed, during the course of playing around with the NFL statistics, that basing predictions on the previous year’s results was equally effective. ITP says to look at the team’s current record. That resulted in a 61% chance of correctly predicting the winner of a football game.

By simply using the previous year’s final record, instead of the in-progress record, you can increase the accuracy to 63%. MPW is not affected – using last year’s numbers results in the same accuracy (only one game difference). I did not calculate MYW based on last year’s numbers – that is left as an exercise for the reader.