Now that the dust has settled on the College Bowl season, it’s time to look back. It’s been a wild ride, with some blowouts, some upsets, and a couple of crazy games, including TCU’s epic 3-OT comeback thriller over Oregon last night.

Lots of experts, from ESPN, to Bleacher Report, to FiveThirtyEight, to the Vegas sportsbooks made bold predictions, with mixed results. We already wrote about how the statisticians at FiveThirtyEight predicted Oklahoma to win it all, only to have Clemson beat them by 20 in the semi-final game.  Of course, if you can’t look to the experts for predictions, who can you look to?  Consider this…

Researchers used a “human swarming” platform called UNU to tap the knowledge and intuition of 60 average sports fans, using their Collective Intelligence to predict the College Bowls.  A merger of A.I. and human insights, UNU swarms quickly converged on optimal solutions.  The Swarm picked 6 of 9 bowl games correctly against the spread, including Clemson over Oklahoma and Baylor over heavily favored UNC.

Below is a replay of the 68 person swarm predicting that #17 Baylor would prevail over #10 North Carolina:

Going into today’s NFL regular season finale, those same researchers asked a “human swarm” to predict today’s games. Here are those predictions, along with the Las Vegas point spreads. Check back later for an update on how the swarm performed.

Will a swarm of average sports fans beat the experts again?  I will post all the results as soon as they’re in.  In the mean time, if you are a sports fan who wants to contribute to future predictions, the swarm could use your insights.  Just fill out the form below:

Help the Swarm make predictions: