The Respect-O-Matic

The impetus for the Respect-O-Matic is similar to that of the Respect-O-Meter. Because the line in Vegas is designed to guess the attitudes of gamblers and then is adjusted to match their voting behavior, the Vegas line, like the stock market, is a mechanism for aggregating information on the public perception of the worth of a football team. The Respect-O-Matic tracks that perception for each team over the course of the season.


One note of interest is that the reputation is more stable than performance. This makes sense since more variables are used to determine a team's performance than their reputation, for example, the public does not know (unless they bought the illegal newsletter from the coach) about the minor aches and pains of players or who had too much to drink at their birthday party on Wednesday night.

Second, there is a lag between performance and reputation. Again, this makes sense because the reputation responds to a team's performance (and the line is released before the game while the score, outside of Back to the Future, is not released until the end of the game).