NAME:  NFL Scores for 1998-2000
TYPE:  Census (All values from 1998, 1999 and 2000 regular seasons) 
SIZE:  736 games, 7 variables

DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT:
The dataset contains scores for all regular season National Football
League games from the 1998, 1999 and 2000 seasons.  In addition to 
the points scored by the home and visiting teams in each game, the
dataset contains a pointspread that handicaps each game.

SOURCE:
The pointspreads were taken from ESPN's Pigskin Pickem game
(http://games.espn.go.com). Game scores are from personal records.

VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS:
Columns 
 1 -  4  Year (1998, 1999, or 2000)
 6 -  7  Week of the season (1 to 17)
10 - 27  Home team name
29 - 30  Home team score
33 - 50  Visiting team name
52 - 53  Visiting team score
56 - 60  Pointspread 

Values are aligned and delimited by blanks.

STORY BEHIND THE DATA:
The dataset contains scores for all regular season games from the 1998,
1999 and 2000 NFL seasons.  The pointspread for each game is set (before
the game is played) as a device to handicap the game.  One may view the 
pointspread as a "predicted" margin of victory for the home team. To
determine the winner "against the spread" the value of the pointspread
is added to the visiting team's score.  Note that a negative pointspread 
indicates that the visiting team is favored over the home team and will
have points subtracted from its score.  All pointspreads in this dataset 
are of the form (integer + 0.5) so there is always a pointspread winner
for each game. 

PEDAGOGICAL NOTES:
The NFL data can be used to investigate a wide variety of questions that
might be generated by sports-minded students. Is there a home field 
advantage? What's a typical margin of victory in an NFL game? What does
the distribution of scores look like? How well do the pointspreads predict
actual game outcomes?  Is there a good algorithm for picking winners 
(either outright or against the spread)?  

An article based on some analyses of these data appears in the Winter 2002 
issue of STATS magazine. 

Data from earlier seasons (1993-1996) can be found in the Journal of Statistics
Education data archive along with an article, "NFL Scores and Pointspreads", 
in the _Journal of Statistics Education_ , Volume 5, Number 3 (November 1997). 


SUBMITTED BY:
Robin H. Lock
Burry Professor of Statistics
Department of Mathematics, Computer Science & Statistics
St. Lawrence University
Canton, NY  13617
rlock@stlawu.edu