So, I am reading Warren Sharp's material, mostly about the upcoming individual NFL team schedules. He has an impressive array of marketing material...because I do not pay for picks I am out of the loop with knowledge of whether he benefits his clientele, or not. It's a LONG offseason and he and his minions are spending their offseason writing promotional material for his picks website......he has spent a whole page on detailing that "of course teams with the rest advantage in individual games and over the case of the season will benefit, because it's common sense"....right?
Hmmm, maybe, or NOT.
Because 80% of what you read in the media in regards to sports betting is complete rubbish, I thought I would run actual data, rather than use "common sense", because maybe common sense doesn't make bettors profitable......worth it to me to find out.
First of all, he makes the point that those teams with greater than a 7 days rest more than their present opponent don't have an advantage....which I found to be correct...those teams went 12-22 ATS (using seasons after 2011 when the NFL started has curtailing teams ability to have unlimited practices).
His assertion that greater rest (we won't use the term "rest advantage") is a bigger advantage later in the season is questionable. In essence it's an advantage in very last week or two of the season and in September, about break even for October and A DISADVANTAGE all other times.
I ran the online database to find out if and when greater rest was applicable to see how teams did from an against the spread perspective....here are the results.
ATS results by month for teams with greater rest (of less than 8 days) than their present opponent.
September 85-67-3 ATS (+1.08) 55.9%
October 170-152-8 ATS (0.78), 53.1%
November 156-183-12 ATS (-1.13) 46.7%
December 166-184-7 ATS (0.0) 47.4%
January 36-28-2 (0.5) 56.2%
Greater rest teams covered slightly less than 50% of the time in Sunday games, 52.7% in Monday games, and 55.6% of time in Saturday games. The issue of rest as a possible prognostication tool is a waste of time and your money.
Query text(s)
rest>o:rest and rest-o:rest<8 and season>2011 and day and playoffs=0
rest>o:rest and rest-o:rest<8 and season>2011 and month and playoffs=0
Athletes are fine tuned machines, they respond best to a set schedule. My observation is they do better with activity in a consistent sequence of days. This year in the NBA teams performed well with no rest and one day's rest, and did much worse with more than a day's rest.
We just saw two NBA teams who cruised through their first two playoff series, with extended rest get taken to the woodshed in their first game of their next series, though the Knicks came back from 22 down in the 4th to win, while the Thunder lost. Likewise two number seeds in the NHL that between those two teams lost one game in the their first two rounds get beaten in their opening game after extended rest, getting beaten by two teams that had been taken into a 7 game series versus their previous opponents.
Athletes would rather be playing, rather than resting.
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