Donkey, I had the same question as you about Rocky's system, although I'd word it more like "but what if a team that qualifies under the system (because it has 6> starters than its opponent) sucked LY, and is playing a team that was good LY? For example, a team that went 3-8 LY that has 6 more starters TY than its week 3 opponent, which went 8-4 LY, including a bowl game, which they won, would be a play under Rocky's system, but not under my refined version of his system (see below)..
Maybe I'm "weeding out" some winners with the following refinement, but I believe it will weed out more losers than winners (by weeding out bad teams, especially when they are playing good teams). And my refinement is this:
In determining whether one of Rocky's plays will qualify under my refinement of his system, the numerical difference in returning starters would be increased or decreased by the difference between the two teams' number of wins LAST season, and the team with 5> returning starters than its opponent would be a play ONLY if the final, adjusted # was +5>. So in my above example, the team with 6 more starters than its opponent but with a 3-8 record LY compared to its opponent's 8-4 would have its 6 starter advantage reduced by 5 (the difference in the two teams' # of wins LY), and thus would not even be close to qualifying as a play under my refinement of his system, based on its adjusted number of +1.
Since I did not use or follow Rocky's system the first two weeks of TY's CFB season, I don't know which games and teams made up the record that he shows for the first two weeks, but if I knew which games they were (Rocky?) I could and would be happy to determine what the record would be of those plays if they included only the ones which qualify under my refined version. Meanwhile, I'll go through the list of Rocky's system plays for TW, and determine which ones also qualify under my refined version of the system, and then do an update of this post indicating which games and teams those are. It will then be interesting to compare the results. I'm not saying my shorter list of qualifying plays will do better than Rocky's longer list, only that logically, my plays should do better due to my refinement of the system and not backing bad teams, especially against opponents which may still be good teams - but as we all know, things in sports wagering that make perfect sense sometimes blow up in our faces. In any event, stay tuned my friends, more to come on this. Hope everyone finds this helpful, and thanks to Rocky for sharing his system with us.
Great Owl