#3 and climbing!

With Ohio State having a real chance now of getting to the BCS title game, I was wondering how I might calculate the %chance of them making it. My model is that if Oklahoma and/or Pitt wins, Ohio State advances to the BCS title game. Oklahoma is favored by 3 while WV is favored by 28. I would need some history to convert these spreads into percentages which I have seen for NBA basketball I think. I did find this website and it suggests using a normal curve with a standard deviation of 14 points. That gives OK a 58% of winning and Pitt a 2% chance. Therefore, Ohio State has a 59% chance to advance to the BCS title game.

This is where I estimated how to convert point spreads to win probabilities.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-1305(199108)45%3A3%3C179%3AOTPOWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V

This also has an interesting formula.

Win%=PointSpread/29.64988+.5 ( do we need all of those decimal places?)
Anyhow, this converts to a OK win % of 60%. clearly this method is better. Pitt has no chance of winning using this method.

http://www.smartcapper.com/article_converting_nfl_point_spreads_to_money_lines.html