Does anyone know/understand how the line is determined for the games? I've seen some weird ones before, and I had another one the other night that didn't make any sense to me.

I was favored on the road by 1 point (small, but still a clear favorite). Even though the spread was small, it was early season, and the Top 25 ranking difference was also pretty small, I can't figure out why I was favored.

1. I was on the road
2. I was the worse ranked team (#15 vs #13)
3. I had a lower team rating
4. I had a lower margin of victory through the first 4 games
5. We had the same record (3-0)

Any ideas?

Do you have more upperclassmen/higher IQ than your opponent?

Spreads are pretty pointless IMO. Just recently this season with CNU I was a 5 pt favorite and loss by 30. Then two games later I was an 8 point dog and won by 40. Who the hell knows.

He had more upperclassmen, but we were pretty similar in IQ (I might have had a little better). He had a couple seniors with B or B- IQ.

I'm more interested because I believe the spread influences your top 25 ranking and possibly RPI/Seeding in the tourney.

Spread doesn't affect those things. RPI is a known formula you can read in the FAQ.

top 25 values pure wins too much IMO. Much more than projection report which values SOS quite a bit.

I never really cared enough to make an effort to try to figure it out.

There's this giant dartboard in the back room of WIS and the night crew gets bored, so just as soon as the games sim, they grab three darts each and have a go at it with one guy as the away team and the other as the home team. The difference between the scores is the line for a particular game.

Window dressing is the phrase that comes to my mind.

It's not just window dressing unless the entire top 25 is just window dressing, which it could be, in which case disregard the rest of this. If the top 25 at all influences seeding or selection into the NT then it matters, and the top 25 is mentioned a few times in the FAQ, so I think it has some influence.

Some movements in the top 25 are based on a somewhat arbitrary spread. Obviously wins and losses matter more than how you do vs the spread, but you see tons of examples where a team is favored by an absurd margin, can't beat the spread and falls in the top 25 even though they still win by a large margin.

Example from last night in Wooden where all teams won:
#9 ranked Seton Hall wins by 30 at Troy when favored by 64. Still a big win, but they fall from 9 to 13, passed by:
#10 Cal (beat spread by 14)
#12 Utah (beat spread by 5)
#11 Iowa State (hit spread exactly)
#13 Weber State (beat spread by 3)

That's mostly why I think it could matter, if the top 25 matters. Bad spreads could be unnecessarily putting teams in a hole. It can also be a problem with smaller spreads as was originally mentioned.

I dont think the top 25 or the projection report have anything to do with the spread.

For sure, rpi has nothing to do with the spread

The spread is often indicative of the stronger team but it can be very wrong. No idea how it is generated.

It definitely seems to me it affects the Top 25.

FAQ on top 25 ranking

"Top 25 rankings are based on a combination of talent and game results. The "talent" portion is calculated by looking at the skill ratings of players (excluding Work Ethic, Stamina, and Durability), with more weight given to a team's top 5 players. The "game results" portion is based on opponent rank, score margin, and result (win or loss) for each completed game.

Before the season starts, all weight is placed on talent - and then as the season progresses, more and more weight is placed on game results. By the end of the season, almost all of the weight is on game results.

There may be significant movement of teams early in the season because there are so few games, but as the season moves along, the best teams will rise to the top."

wins over good teams help you in ranking - but I think thats not because of the spread - rather it is because of the ranking and win totals of those teams. this no doubt correlates with spread, but I dont think the spread is the variable - based on the FAQ and ancient discussions of rankings.

Wayyyy back in the day, they used to have a fake WIS casino, where you could place fake bets on the results of HD games and win HD credits (I won a pretty nice credit pack just by finding insane lines, like a 70 point spread, and betting the underdog to cover). There were like 10 ppl using it, so they eventually junked it. The spread may be a relic of that era. It has no impact on anything in the game (like RPI, top 25 or seeding). It's only value is to give you a semi-inaccurate view of how seriously you should take an opponent and how evenly you are matched up with them.