Editor’s Note: We are very pleased to announce the addition of Tyler Shoemaker to our writing staff. Tyler will be writing a few times per week to cover a variety of sports from the perspective of his proprietary model, the T Shoe Index. He will primarily cover college football and the NFL, but will also contribute with college basketball and WNBA content, along with guest appearances on VSiN shows.
An Introduction
My name is Tyler Shoemaker and I’ve been sports betting since 2017. What started out as trying to hit 10-team parlays every college football Saturday quickly turned into a competitive obsession once I began to learn some betting fundamentals – including the (un)likelihood of ever hitting a 10-team parlay *insert facepalm emoji*. As a former 2x All-Ohio basketball player, competition is in my nature so the opportunity to get really good at something sports-related while being able to put some money in my pocket became my new mission. Thus, the seed to my T Shoe Index (TSI) was planted.
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Methodology
As I’ll explain in a minute, I have no background in statistics or data science, which I think is what makes TSI so digestible and relatable. I wanted to keep it simple; how many points would team X be expected to score and allow vs team Y? While there are a myriad of ways to come to this conclusion – some more complex than others – this is ultimately the question that we, as sports bettors and consumers of sports, want to know.
The engine that makes TSI run is the ability to adjust opponent and tempo to standardize results across games to properly rate each team’s performance; therefore, sometimes a team might win a game but have their power rating decreased and vice versa. I do produce a resume-style ranking after we have in-season data, which is aimed to reward those quality wins and penalize losses, but from a predictive standpoint, the W/L column is not an input whatsoever.
Early Days of the T Shoe Index
While I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree, neither of which is in anything stats or data-related; therefore, the earliest days of TSI were archaic; I’m talking pen and notebook math archaic. Those notebooks eventually turned into spreadsheets that I manually populated weekly throughout the 2018 season, which led to my first opportunity to publicize my work via the “Buckeye Talk” podcast from Cleveland.com as a featured guest, as host Doug Lesmerises was the only podcast host who actually returned my Twitter DM soliciting my services.
After periodic appearances on Buckeye Talk over the next few years and getting practice podcast reps on my brother TJ’s “Section 111” podcast, I was able to land a season-long contract with Cleveland.com for the 2022 season as a co-host of the “Betting the Buckeyes” episode of Buckeye Talk each week. After cashing 60% (24-16) of my best bets, 80%(!!) (8-2) of my Ohio State bets and a profitable 38% (5-8) of my touchdown-or-more upset picks of the week in 2022, TSI was beginning to gain some momentum publicly.
T Shoe Index Expansion
Now, in what I would consider Year 5 of doing my projections, I have amassed a 504-407-23 record in CFB (55%). The success of my college football model had me thirsting for more: more sports, more bets, more opportunities. I quietly tested NFL, WNBA, NBA, College Basketball (Men’s and Women’s) behind-the-scenes in 2022 and began 2023 releasing my WNBA plays daily on my X (Twitter), which has produced a scorching 39-22 (64%) record and a corresponding follower increase as word as gotten out about the cheat code that is TSI.
I recently released my 2023 preseason CFB and NFL ratings, win totals and projections on every single game – including my proprietary projection tool, which allows you to create hypothetical matchups for any two teams in CFB or NFL and get a projected spread, total and score.
College Football TSI Ratings | NFL TSI Ratings
Where you can find me
If making data-driven, informed bets year around seems like your thing, you can follow me on X, @TShoeIndex, hear me in podcast form talking college football from a general sense through the lens of my power ratings on the Calculated Risk podcast at SaturdayGlory.com, talking Ohio State and Browns on Buckeye Talk and Orange and Brown Talk from Cleveland.com and, most importantly, get all of my best bets exclusively right here at VSIN.com. I thoroughly enjoy the interactions with everyone, so please feel free to reach out. Until then, let’s cash some bets.
