NFL Database

I'm in the process of constructing a database of every NFL game played between 1997-2007, including preseason and postseason (separated, of course). The information I'll be including is:

Teams (obviously)
Score
Spread
Total Points
O/U
Game in relation to bye week
Whether in division, and whether 1st or 2nd game
Consecutive home and away games
Starting QB (difficult, I may drop this one, unless I hit the microfiche)
Head coach
Building

I'm also considering doing weather as well, but I'm not sure about whether I want the undertaking. My question is whether there's anything I'm forgetting that would be potentially helpful information. I may extend the database to before 1997 as well once I'm done with what I've set out to do. I've got 20 teams so far, and I hope to be done by around February.

Stick to the schoolbooks. A job at a big firm will only result in you having more money to lose and less time to cap the games. Get out while you can.

Bad Mahi Mahi wrote:

Stick to the schoolbooks. A job at a big firm will only result in you having more money to lose and less time to cap the games. Get out while you can.

It's not the money issue to me- to be honest, I could go forever without betting another game in my life. It's the challenge of it. I like football, I follow football closely, and I like the challenge of taking the variables into account, figuring out values, etc. My bankroll has never been more than $200 in a given season, and I doubt I'd ever bet much more than that even once I hit the big time. I'm pretty risk-averse by nature.

You can probably buy this database for a lot less than you are going to spend in time putting it together. And you also will get a lot of fundamental factors to go with your technical ones...rushing yards, passing yards, yards per play, yards per attempt, etc. etc. The database as you have conceived it will provide situational/technical plays. IMO fundamental factors are far more relevant.

Coast2Coast wrote:

You can probably buy this database for a lot less than you are going to spend in time putting it together. And you also will get a lot of fundamental factors to go with your technical ones...rushing yards, passing yards, yards per play, yards per attempt, etc. etc. The database as you have conceived it will provide situational/technical plays. IMO fundamental factors are far more relevant.

me = cheap, poor. Besides, the information I'm most interested in having is the information that's available before the game, not the stuff that comes up after the game. I follow publications when it comes to current statistical analyses, power rankings, etc. I already subscribe to the Football Outsiders advanced statistics database, and I'm not looking to reduplicate that info. Besides, I can't use those concrete numbers to factor my bets anyway, since I won't know them until the game is over.

I want to be able to answer for myself, "what's the value of X", whether X is the bye week in the past five or ten years, the second time facing an opponent in a season, a half-point since 2002 or 2000 or 1997, whatever. I understand that a lot of that info is available for sale elsewhere, but by producing it on my own I can both expand it as I see fit without copyright issues, weed out unnecessary data, whatever. It also allows me the flexibility of not relying upon Johnny Handicapper to show me trends or values and rely upon their data set or timeframe. And besides I can maybe recoup some of my time losses by selling the spreadsheets myself. I'm not counting on it, or even really thinking about it much, but it's not an option if I buy it on my own.

Let us know when you are done.

Nas wrote:

Let us know when you are done.

I'll send a copy to a few people on the boards, partly because I'd love for some other people to see if there's anything I could do to improve it, but also because I think it'll be fairly worthwhile. Or at least having it will be better than not having it. It probably won't be done until after the 2007 season though.