Sell Seth Davis

Every year, right around the start of the conference season, Seth Davis writes a piece for Sports Illustrated in which he treats basketball teams like stocks, and advises us whether to "buy," "sell," or "hold" our imaginary holdings in various teams. This year he published that column on January 3d. I decided to see how he is doing as of now.

Not well.

I went through and gave his advice a grade of "good," "bad," or "meh" for each of the 41 teams he rated. The result: Davis had 10 "good" picks, 13 "meh" picks, and 18 "bad" picks. You would expect a monkey to get just under 14 "good" picks just picking at random. Davis's performance of 10 was more than one standard deviation below expectations. In other words, a monkey would have gotten more "good" picks about 85% of the time.

Moreover, in 11 of the 41 picks (more than 25%) Davis was as wrong as he could be—advising to sell to a stock he should have put a buy rating on, or vice versa. According to my simulations, a monkey picking randomly would generally make just 8 such terrible picks, and Davis was again more than a standard deviation off the mean. The monkey would make 10 or fewer or screw-ups like this more than 80% of the time.

Even worse, you would expect Davis to do significantly better than a monkey because the sample isn't random: he is choosing which teams to opine on, and he is presumably choosing to give advice on the teams he has his strongest, most well-founded opinions on.

The raw data is below, with Davis's terrible picks in bold. For example, he advised to "sell" Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Miami but "buy" Kentucky, North Carolina, and San Diego State. I guess you could argue there's still time for those predictions to come true, but ... Ouch.

Preliminary conclusion: Don't let Seth Davis fill out your tourney brackets for you, because you can't trust this guy with even five bucks when it comes to college basketball. And, to be safe, don't let him invest your money either.

Team	Record on 1/3	AP then	Davis Rec	Record now	AP  now	result	Correct advice
Arizona	12- 0	3	Hold	22-4	12	Meh	Sell
Baylor	8-4	-	Hold	16-10	-	Bad	Sell
Butler	11-2	17	Buy	22-5	15	Meh	Hold
Cincy	13-1	14	Sell	19-8	-	Good	Sell
Creighton	13-1	16	Buy	22-6	-	Bad	Sell
Duke	13-0	1	Buy	22-3	6	Meh	Hold
Florida	9-2	13	Hold	21-4	5	Meh	Buy
Georgetown	10-1	15	Buy	20-4	11	Good	Buy
Illinois	13-2	11	Sell	20-8	-	Good	Sell
Indiana	13-1	5	Buy	24-3	1	Good	Buy
Kansas	11-1	6	Buy	22-4	9	Meh	Hold
K State	11-2	25	Hold	21-5	13	Meh	Buy
Kentucky	9-4	-	Buy	18-8	-	Bad	Sell
Louisville	13-1	4	Buy	21-5	10	Meh	Hold
Maryland	12-1	-	Sell	18-8	-	Good	Sell
Miami	9-3	-	Sell	22-3	2	Bad	Buy
Memphis	9-3	-	Hold	23-3	21	Bad	Buy
Michigan	13-0	2	Hold	22-4	7	Good	Hold
MSU	11-3	18	Sell	22-5	4	Bad	Buy
Minnesota	10-2	9	Hold	18-9	-	Bad	Sell
Missouri	10-2	12	Buy	19-7	-	Bad	Sell
New Mex.	13-2	20	Hold	22-4	16	Meh	Buy
UNC	10-3	-	Buy	18-8	-	Bad	Sell
NC State	11-2	23	Buy	19-7	-	Bad	Sell
Notre Dame	12-1	21	Buy	21-6	25	Meh	Hold
OSU	11-2	8	Sell	19-7	18	Meh	Hold
OK State	10-2	22	Sell	19-6	14	Bad	Hold
Oregon	11-2	-	Buy	21-6	23	Meh	Hold
Pitt	12-2	24	Buy	20-7	20	Meh	Hold
SD State	12-2	19	Buy	19-7	-	Bad	Sell
Syracuse	13-1	7	Sell	22-4	8	Bad	Hold
Tennessee	8-3	-	Sell	15-10	-	Good	Sell
Texas	8-5	-	Buy	12-14	-	Bad	Sell
UCLA	10-3	-	Buy	19-7	-	Bad	Hold
Uconn	10-3	-	Sell	18-7	-	Bad	Hold
UNLV	11-2	-	Hold	20-7	-	Good	Hold
VCU	11-3	-	Buy	21-6	24	Good	Buy
Wichita St.	13-1	-	Buy plus!	23-5	-	Bad	Hold
Wisconsin	9-4	-	Sell	19-8	19	Bad	Buy
Xavier	7-6		Sell	15-10	-	Meh	Hold
Wyoming	13-0		Sell	18-8	-	Good	Sell

Here's a link to the spreadsheet I used in case you're interested. I probably screwed a bunch of stuff up. If I can remember, next year I will make random picks corresponding to Davis's, and we'll see who comes out ahead.