Kentucky Sports Radio

(Apologies for the AaronsUKBasketballBlog sized picture, but evidently Jeff Sagarin has only taken one picture in his life.)

Jeff Sagarin is known for many things, like his Mathematics degree from M.I.T. and (judging by his one picture) owning the ruined restored painting of “Ecce Homo.”  Perhaps he is most known to the general public as “the guy who does all those fancy computer ratings.”  Sagarin recently released his 2012 pre-season college football rankings with defending national champion, Alabama, taking the top spot yet again.  More importantly to citizens of the Bluegrass State, Sagarin has Louisville as only 5 point favorites over visiting Kentucky.  To compute these predictions one must simply examine point ratings of individual teams and location of the game.  Louisville (ranked 59th) has a predicted rating of 71.95 while Kentucky (68th) has a predicted rating of 70.0.  Once subtracted and rounded to the nearest whole number, Charlie Strong’s Cardinals would only be two point favorites at a neutral site, but once home field advantage is accounted for (3 points), Louisville is favored by five.  This prediction seemingly agrees with Phil Steele’s prediction of a close game (except Steele predicts a Wildcat upset), but disagrees with the current Vegas line of +14.  A further explanation of the ratings, which predict another LSU and Alabama Title game, can be found here.